>> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west." special edition today. amazon's primetime play. ofhave complete analysis amazon's big announcement tv,aling amazon fire stepping up the competition with google and netflix and more. first, a check on your top headlines. blackberry will no longer

allowed t-mobile to sell its phones with its current contract expires on april 25. in a statement, t-mobile says blackberry business strategies are not complementary. urgedn february, the ceo users to switch over to the iphone. has hold up more than half of her stake in the social networking company. she sold 26 million of her 41 million shares since facebook went public in may 2012. some of the sales were to settle tax bills. china forooking to business opportunities. the chipmaker just announced a one hundred million dollar fund in china to try to get intel chips into more chinese made computers and mobile devices. they are also setting up an innovation center near many of the factories where the devices are made. first to our lead story of the

day, a special show on amazon, a big unveiling in new york city of fire tv. they had to get the word fire in there. significant. i hate covering product announcements, but i think this an interesting position for amazon to be in because they are trying to use hardware to get where their software has not been able to be , being in the business that netflix is in. streams movies, tv, has wi-fi, cost $99, starts shipping today. take a listen to what peter larson, the vice president of amazon, had to say about what it can do. >> what can you watch on fire tv ? it has a ton of content. from amazon instant video, prime espn,ick video, hulu, showtime, major league baseball, nba, the disney channels,

bloomberg tv, youtube era it is the easiest place to watch netflix. west. can get bloomberg >> we are here to help. edmund leeo get to who was at the event in new york city. i understand you got your hands on this device. what did it feel like, tell us about it? >> it felt like plastic. [laughter] the most remarkable thing is it is pretty small. even smaller than the apple tv. it is similar in proportion but just a smaller version. instead of white it is black. there are a whole lot of ports on the back. the physical properties of it less of a matter than what you have access to, bloomberg tv for one, clearly.

thing to note, if you do not have a prime subscription, there is less to watch. even though it is $99, like apple's, you also have to pay for the prime subscription to get access to a lot of the streaming shows, tv shows, movies they have on their. >> it has been described as a thick coaster. in terms of how it stand up from the competition, one of the things that peter larson pointed out, it has three times the power and performance of some of the competitors. this thing really screams. i cannot wait for you to try it out. if you add it all up, fire tv has three times the performance and power of apple tv, roku 3, of chrome cast. this is a powerful device. >> what does that actually mean?

>> people were tweeting from the event, three times faster? he specifically said power and howormance -- i do not know to quantify that. that was unclear as to what exactly that meant. , think he was trying to go for it is probably faster, less delays in terms of how content is streamed. faster processors. all those things certainly count . three times more powerful is a hard thing to pin down. was definitely trying to pit it against the other devices still out there. >> to what degree does this help amazon get around other barriers it was facing, getting prime and video in the hands of consumers? is they are thing trying to own the living room in terms of what consumers are buying with media even apple tv was an important thing because a lot of movie downloads -- dvd

sales have declined in favor of downloads. apple owns a lot of that. now amazon can sell more because it is that much more seamless for consumers to rent a movie, buy a tv show or a whole season, and have it swung onto their tv set. that is what they are betting -- battling for. they are not trying to be in the media or hardware business. they just want to sell more stuff. today,s on sale starting $99. edmund lee, thank you for covering for that -- that for us in new york. now questions about whether this would change amazon's business model, a company with historically low margins. joining us is a man that worked with amazon in building the fire tv conduct. also here is jon erlichman. i have to point out, jeff bezos was not there today.

what does that mean? increasingly, he is not out there. he does not put his face on their core product announcements. kindle fire hd. >> i think this just tells you that this is just an extension of what amazon is doing. they were pushing the idea of voice search today.

were pointing that out, this thing is built on android. thank you for joining us today. fans of the x-files and be able to watch more from the

creator but they will not be doing it on fox. his new show is an amazon original. the writer and director joins us next.

>> i'm emily chang. this is "bloomberg west." we have been talking about announcement tv but earlier this week the agreement six new series green lighting content for amazon prime. one of those shows is "the after" written by chris carter, the creator of the x-files. he is with us today. chris, you took a hiatus from tv for 10 years. why come back for an amazon original?

>> i had written something two years ago that i was excited about. to bring itwo years to the screen. amazon was the first person who read it and loved it. that is why i'm in business. >> did you shop it elsewhere to the networks, cable, netflix? >> you give it to your agents and they put it out there. amazon responded immediately. the process has been a lengthy one. >> let's talk about this idea of having pilots. amazon has been very public. here are a few shows we are putting out there for people to watch, and then they are very public about saying we got this feedback from reviewers and we will go ahead. havecreator, when you people like netflix who are willing to do these very big deals from the get go, should we assume that the approach of amazon in picking shows is quite different from what netflix is

doing? >> this is the first time i have ever experienced this gladiator approach, putting it out to the audience and they give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. it is the wisdom of crowds. i like the approach. >> we should highlight, while you are very much going down the amazon road, it is not the only one that you are on right now. you are working with amc as well. what is the primary difference between working with amazon and with one of the very well-known known cable channels or broadcast networks that we know? >> it is not really different at all. different personnel, players, but the approach is always the ,ame, to do something original something smart. that is how i approach my job and have everyone else does too. >> how does the ability to binge

watch change the way that you write or direct a show? >> this is my first experience in doing it exactly like this, giving people the opportunity to binge watch. i'm not sure if amazon will put in exactlyt there the way that you could binge watch it. we have not talked about that approach yet. for me, this is my first work off of broadcast network. i'm really looking forward to that for other reasons, including less restriction on what i can say and what i can show. >> we will talk more about just what "the after" is. chris carter, now making a new show for amazon. ♪

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west." with writer and are up to her chris carter, director of the x-files, no creating original content for amazon. his show is called "the after." ll about,the after" a how is this different from the work you've done before? theeople have asked question. it owes a lot to the x-files, it is science fiction, but it is its own original idea about a catastrophe that begins in those iteles -- los angeles area is a big mystery what happens. >> good teaser, chris. if people are watching, let's

say, on this new fire tv device. -- workinge creating on the storylines, do you think about how people are viewing it, whether it is on a small screen? does that change the nature of the storyline, the effects? >> really, it is the same approach but i was mindful when , was choosing an aspect ratio the size of the picture, most people would be watching on a smaller screen. example, the ipad, for -- where i watch my streaming content. for me, the images have to be great, no matter what the size the picture and where people are watching. >> amazon has not given the public much information about their audience.

i wonder if they've given more information to you. they have been asked about this original content thing for some time and not many people can name a single amazon original show. they have not had the success of "orange iscards" or the new black." does that worry you? >> they are brand-new to the business, we are on the frontier here. the approach is really good. i do not know anything about the audience, but that is ok. my job is the same, to create great entertainment. i'm happy to have a great patron like amazon. >> chris, we have to ask you and x-files question. we talked about the possibility of another movie. you said maybe it is in the hands of fox. will there be another movie? >> i don't know, it really is in their hands. everyone would love to do it and

to continue the mythology of the show. >> what is your favorite show on tv or streaming right now? >> that is a hard-won because there is so much great stuff. i love "house of cards." " breaking bad." vince gilligan worked on the show for many years. i love "madmen." there is just so much gray television right now. there has been for over a decade starting with "the sopranos. " so much great stuff on cable and streaming. >> do you have a preference between the set top boxes out there? anyonejust as long as can get what i do, however they get it. if there is more opportunity, that is great for me. writer andrter,

director of the amazon original "the after." we cannot wait to see it after that evocative tease. and for joining us on the special edition of "bloomberg west." amazon is taking on netflix and apple with a new tv device. we will talk about the battle being waged in your living room. you can also watch us streaming on your tablet, phone, and on bloomberg.com. ♪ >> it is 26 minutes past the hour which means bloomberg tv is on the markets. stocks are losing some steam here to the downside. the nasdaq looking over into negative territory not long ago. the s&p giving of its gains for the day. the dow relatively flat. a couple unusual stocks that we are watching. shares taking off today bucking the trend of the market a decision from a

panel on its inhalers to treat type one and type two diabetes. fda is not required to follow the advisers recommendations. back in 30 minutes. ♪

>> you are watching "bloomberg west" where we focus on technology and the future of business. when amazon launched its fire tv device today, it brought it into closer competition with apple and google. all three now offer internet connected gadgets for streaming video to a tv. the move also escalates the rivalry with net flicks and other streaming services developing inclusive content. the big question is who will win the battle for your living room. joining us now is brad stone, author of the book on amazon.

jon erlichman and cory johnson are here as well. brad, you have been working on this for months. what are you thinking now that it is unveiled? >> amazon has been thinking about a set top box since two thousand 11. -- 2011. the big question was how it would raise the bar on row crew, apple tv, tivo. there are a couple of medium ideas, the voice search, which is good. the casual games from the app store. do people want to play mind kraft on their tvs? that is questionable. interactive, no big programming, shopping on your tv but you can buy the watch from james bond. maybe that is coming, but it is not there now. >> apparently, they say fire tv has better search abilities.

take a listen to this commercial. >> i am gary bce. -- busey.ry bce >> this listens to me and here's exactly what i say. amazon fire tv! >> it seems so simple, but is it a big deal or incremental? do people really want to search for tv shows with their voice? sometimes you have to go to the keyboard off of it on other devices. you we will see how the technology works. interesting the same day that microsoft is introducing voice capabilities for navigation on their phones at the microsoft build

conference, you have these companies coming together with the same stuff. i am curious about the game ring. brad, did you get a sense that the gains were an afterthought? >> i think it is one of the ways to distinguish the product. the amazon store does not have a great selection of games. they do not have the google play store. in typical amazon fashion, they are creating their own. they built a studio, they acquired double helix games in california, and introduced some of what those games will be. hard-core gamers want to play hard-core games. they want to play bioshock, not mindcraft. >> this is a way to put all of your businesses together. you have imdb where you can find out anything about actors these days. jeff bezos years ago was making

the push. i do not know necessarily if people are using those services in a big way. ezos was not there today. what do you make of that? minutely involved in the products. the present to him every month. it was not even dave who handles the kindle division. i think that says this is version one, a long-term debt. it is not getting the attention that the kindle fire and e-readers have gotten in terms of holiday launches. >> what about the apple closed ecosystem compared to this open ecosystem? >> take a player like netflix. what they have been able to do to change the experience, if you are using netflix on a roku device, and if you have kids, like i do, and they want to see

limitations, their -- there are limitations if you are using netflix through apple. that is one of the differentiators between apple and roku, and maybe chrome cast. >> is hollywood changing their focus of content, changing from cable, into thinking about selling shows that people will pay money for? is partaw that showtime of this announcement. it is important for them, if they can work out the deal -- hbo was not a part of the announcement today. to be on the different platforms. the content players do not want to make their cable friends angry because they get paid a lot of money to put their content there, but they also don't want to be left in the dust. make sure they have

an app there if you are using the device. >> when you look at the battle for the living room and the players there now, is there an equal playing field? is somebody more threatened than another? >> the upper hand is held by the mso's. the name of the game is still live, linear programming. american still watch five hours of it a day. technology companies have been hitting their heads against the law because customers are not cutting the cord in huge numbers and programmers to look to bundle their channels together and sell them. >> so it is still the oscars, baseball, football -- >> until apple or google can write a huge check and unbundle these networks, these things are a nice add-on. that set top box will be placed on top of the big comcast talks. -- box. whenke the ceo of roku,

chrome cast launched, his sales went up. said in the presentation today, they have all of these customer reviews of the set top boxes, and the chrome cast. sudden there are these new devices, people hear what they are all about. they like them. they are not that much money. more consumers start to learn about these, so it has been a no-brainer that this market is growing. >> i wonder also what it means for the quality of the content. it is something of a golden age of tv where we have these great shows, in numbers that we did not have before. " "theve "house of cards, sopranos" as well as all of these great kids shows happening

at the same time. does this mean that more money is going to hollywood for better content? >> absolutely. look at the second batch of pilots in the amazon studios program. so much better than the first batch. you had this show about the new york city symphony which was really good. you could not say that about the first batch. .hris carter, from the x-files a lot of talent talking to these formats. maybe not quite the viewers just get -- >> amazon likes low prices, but they are not hang low prices for these. >> he said making a show like this for amazon is not much different for other tv stations. thank you both. obviously, a battle we will be watching. up next, it is tech taking on textbooks. how a traditional publisher

teamed up with an app developer to develop the world's first ip-based curriculum. ♪

>> this is "bloomberg west" on bloomberg television. you can also watch us streaming on your tablet, phone, and on bloomberg.com. also on your apple tv and fire tv. the first-ever all-digital curriculum for students k -- 12 -- k-12 it's making its way to classrooms across the country. the way that the curriculum is put together is very different from the traditional way. it is part of our wired series. how publisher pearson turned to an unlikely app developer to build an ipad course. >> this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

i do not think we will see traditional textbooks in five years in any classroom in the united states. >> but this is what you might see. an entirely digital k-12 curriculum for the ipad, the first of its kind, created by pearson, the world's largest educational publisher. as part of its aggressive strategy to dominate the education market by embracing new technology. a chance to really engage and motivate kids in ways we have not been able to for a long time. >> pearson knew about educating kids but they needed help making the leap to digital. they turned to possible, a global web and app developer. >> pearson came to us to say, how can we create a user experience, application that can be successful in the classroom and will work for the teachers and students? >> teaching kids math and english?

that demanded a new lesson plan. app.is is the started 10 months ago simply as a whiteboard and marker. now it ends up to be workable code. >> that is turned into 28 digital math and english courses, each unit filled with real-world illustrations, hands-on exercises, built in notebooks for writing and drawing, as well as supplemental activities. that have interactive's printed page cannot have. videos, animation that are part of each lesson. they are not separate from but part of. >> this spinning house, a seventh-grade geometry lesson for students in los angeles. >> they present a house plan, how it relates to what we should do with architecture to add on to it, figure out what size

floors you need. >> is that different from the way you learn that last year? >> it is good. the camera can go around the house and see how the length and width. >> it is a better educational experience for the kids. it, a five-year study to determine if technology delivers on its promise. that study will look at student performance data before and after testing along with surveys from students, teachers, and parents. it launches in the five school district using their digital curriculum the september. you can catch our series on the web, bloomberg.com. another tool taking classrooms and companies by storm is massive open mind courses. -- open online courses. >> a new form of education.

courses allow hundreds of students to learn at once through videos and readings and practice exercises. many are taught by ivy league professors or industry experts. linda.combring in cofounder lynda weinman. you say you are doing something that colleges are not. what is that? >> we are much quicker to market and we are able to deliver instruction on changing technology. a lot of the teachers are great at teaching their subject matter but they want to focus more on helping students individually and on concepts, so we are able to help them partner with them, beat a compliment with them to teach the technology that is behind a lot of the tools that students used a. are the engagement levels fundamentally different when using digital tools and the ipad? arees, i think they

fundamentally different, but sometimes that is a benefit and sometimes it is not. one of the advantages to the digital tools is they can be more personalized to someone suggest -- exact objective in terms of what they are coming to learn. in a physical classroom, everyone is experiencing the same thing. there are a lot of social skills that happen in person so i'm an advocate of blended learning, combining online and in person. >> how are you different from others?and the >> we are an online library of videos. think youtube, except all the content is curated, taught by for teachers. because we are a library and we have a huge number of -- you cah many different learning objectives. i would say we have a broader

breadth of what we are offering. if you have employees at linda.com and you have some people that are experts at excel in others that are just learning it, everyone should not have to go through the same course. >> how would learning be different than compared to off-line? >> i do not think it is different but just more personalized. one of the great things about video, you can rewind, you can pause. if something went too quickly in the classroom, you do not have to miss out on it. if you want to go faster and skip ahead. , and that is so valuable. >> how are the schools taking this? when we talk to the founder of udacity, he said the schools are pushing back pretty hard. how are the schools responding?

>> the schools love linda.com. they consider us to be a compliment. we are really an online library that is a resource to them to help them keep up to date, keep their own faculty and staff up to date and help students learn more independently so they can do different things in the classroom rather than all having to learn at the same pace and time. cofounder lynda weinman. thank you for being here. aboutdiller speaks out the future of the video streaming service aereo and what happens if it loses in the supreme court. we will have that exclusive interview next. ♪

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west."

microsoft is making some its annualts at billed conference. here are some of the highlights. they will enable windows applications on the xbox. it also unveiled an update to the windows operating mobile system. it also has a new digital assistant with voice search features powered by bing. they will also return to the start menu which people have been missing. one number that tells a whole lot. i wonder where the name came from. >> halo, one of the characters. the bwest byte is zero.

the number of cities that aereo could be if it loses its court case. onreat interview earlier "market makers" earlier today. >> it is interesting to hear him be point-blank about it. >> if we lose, it is finished. >> there is nothing you can salvaged out of the business, the patents, technology? >> it is possible there is some salvaged, but aereo would probably -- i say probably because i cannot see any path forward -- probably would not continue to be in business. >> he is honest about it. >> that runs in parallel from a we heard from the ceo, there is no plan b. there is no other way to go. there is a question about whether this technology could be easily replicated by others. what is the advantage if the broadcasters are going against

them? >> speaking of the future of tv, he also talked about how he feels about amazon fire tv versus the competitors out there. >> for those of us, those who have apple tv, no set top box, them, no setny of no box, little tiny thing, cables or wires, just plug it into the television set and have a broadband collection -- connection. lar in this, many others will be. i think it is great. >> sounds like he is a fan. the way that about things are being consumed, but also putting himself in the middle of it. >> the more competition the better. it is just how the content gets to you. >> although you have to have a

remote control. you can have a different set top box but i do not know if people want to speak to it. media and speaking to it, we caught up with some celebrities at an event last night with the new york observer. are they changing their habits? find it is that much fun to watch on the ipad. >> i watch on tv, the old-fashioned way. >> i still prefer to watch on a tv. i never quite find the right positioning for the ipad. is on my lap, it is angled inappropriately. >> i am a binge watcher, addicted to my ipad. crazy about that. it as theto say anchor of a tv show, i like watching on my device too.

for watching the special show. we will see you later. ♪

.

>> from bloomberg world headquarters in new york, i am mark crumpton. this is "bottom line." the u.s. supreme court strikes down limits on campaign contributions. day 2 on capitol hill for mary barra. and very dillard discusses the area. of our viewers here in the united states and those of you joining us from around the world, welcome. a