Hope everyone had a great Labor Day week. “Marking time” is the best way to summarize the week as investors digest earnings multiples, Apple’s big event on Tuesday (Bloomberg analysis here), and the increasing reality that “higher, longer” is the trajectory for interest rates.

The Fab Five were down $125 billion for the week (slightly more than one AT&T) with Apple’s losses offset by small gains in the other four. The Telco Top Five were down $10 billion for the week with most of that loss coming from Verizon. Cable is winning the value shift in 2023 with Comcast and Charter up $53 billion and AT&T and Verizon down by $54 billion. We will explore the full range of pre-earnings comments in next week’s Brief.

Speaking of cable, the Spectrum-Charter carriage dispute has entered the second weekend, with Monday Night Football (Buffalo vs. the Jets) coming up. Both Buffalo and New York City are major Spectrum/ Charter service areas. Great for local bars (and fiber to the home providers in upstate NY such as Greenlight Networks), but bad for Charter (who is losing cash flow with every video disconnection and growing their increasingly vulnerable single-play base).

As many of you like links to background on topics, here’s the full link to the David Faber interview with Disney CEO Bob Iger earlier this year (CNBC Pro subscription required). Transcript is here (and free). For those of you who do not have a CNBC Pro subscription, here’s the relevant part related to linear video that is not behind a paywall.

The most interesting interview that we saw this week related to the Spectrum-Charter dispute was on CNBC’s Squawk Box (full interview here). Michael Nathanson’s (of Moffett Nathanson fame) suggestion that the dispute could be resolved if Disney were to include ESPN+ in the deal terms is innovative and spot on. Check out the link above for additional information.

Finally, there’s Apple’s troubles with the Chinese government. More on that from Bloomberg here. We don’t think this is the last chapter in that battle – in fact, it’s early innings.

Full file is below. Have a terrific weekend!