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The NFL'S Profitability; Dion Dawkins is Interviewed About Damar Hamlin; December Jobs Numbers; FDA Decision Expected on Alzheimer's Drug. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 06, 2023 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: And give you an idea of how much the TV stations are making. The Super Bowl ad revenue, in 2022 it was about $500 million. That's up from $214 million back in 2002.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Wow.

ENTEN: So the franchises are getting wealthier and the TV partners are also getting wealthier.

Of course, there was another sort of component that's going on here, American betting. How many Americans bet on the NFL? We're now about to 47 million. That's up from 38 million just three years ago. During the bottom of the pandemic it was 33 million. But we're clearly seeing a rise.

And this idea, you know, that maybe there are fewer NFL fans than there used to be. Favorite sport to watch, look at this trend line. There is no trend line. It was 38 percent in 1981, 38 percent, 37, 35, 36 percent. The fact is, the NFL is America's favorite sport, and it's here to stay.

HARLOW: Thank you, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

HARLOW: Appreciate the numbers.

Don.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you.

This morning we are getting a positive and really remarkable update on Damar Hamlin. We're so happy about that. His doctors say that he is awake, neurologically sound, and is moving his hands and feet. Damar has been sedated and intubated since Sunday's hit sent him into cardiac arrest. Doctors say he's still critically ill, but his condition has improved substantively, which is just the news his family and teammates have been waiting for.

So, we're also hearing new audio from the moment Damar collapsed on the field. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead and go over to the cot. I don't like how he went down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to need everybody, all call, all call.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need everybody.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come bring everybody, we need everyone on doc (ph) everybody.

Bring the cot with the medics, all of you and get wheeled out here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Field medic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead for field medics.

(INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead.

I need another medic in the back please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need a medic in the back of the bus?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Affirmative, we are right outside the gate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, I'm on my way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, Bills offensive lineman Dion Dawkins praised Denny Kellington, the Bills assistant trainer, who gave CPR to Damar on the field, and Dion Dawkins now joins me.

We're so happy to have you. Good morning to you, sir. We really appreciate it.

This is some good news that we've all been waiting for, no more than you and the family, obviously. How are you feeling learning that Damar has been improving, that he's awake? That's got to feel good to you.

DION DAWKINS, OFFENSIVE LINEMAN, BUFFALO BILLS: Yes, that's - well, first of all, great morning.

Well, that is the best news that me and my teammates could have ever received, that Damar has woken up and that he's been responsive and his parents are in - are in high, high, high faith and high spirits. So, it's been - it's been great, honestly, it has.

LEMON: Yes. Listen, I've got to reveal a little secret. I've been texting with his mom. She's such a great lady.

DAWKINS: Yes.

LEMON: I just won't - I won't reveal what we've been saying, but she is a -- she's a -- such a great family. And if there's any good to come out of all this, I think people know that he comes from a great family and what a great person he is.

DAWKINS: Right. And not to miss out, like his father, but his father, like, has been there every step and has been a huge part of it, too. So, just to give credit - and credit there as well.

LEMON: Yes. Can you talk more about that conversation? Because his father spoke to the team. Did - did - I'm -- you heard it, I'm sure. And what did you think. What was your reaction?

DAWKINS: Well, just to see his father's facial expression and just to hear what he was saying to the entire team, it kind of just took a whole bunch of weight off of our shoulders because like, you know, when tragedies happen and things happen, like our brains, like they go into like this bank of uncertainty or just like, you know, just not understanding. So, with his dad coming out on the iPad and just telling us just everything is going to be all right, Damar is getting back. And if he could say anything, and what he would say is, just handle business. So simply just handling business from him and his father, like that's just something that we needed to honestly hear. Like from that hospital room. And we heard it.

So, it was - it was a great feeling and it was great energy. So, it was a - it was a beautiful thing, truly. It was a beautiful thing. And with seeing his father's expression on his face, it was just, honestly, all we needed to honestly see to, you know, take a giant step forward.

[08:35:03]

LEMON: Your communication with Damar, anything, any?

DAWKINS: What, like you're talking about personally?

LEMON: Have you had any - have you had a chance -- yes, personally.

DAWKINS: Just - no, no, no, just - just - just what the doctors and his parents are telling us. But, you know, he is doing great. And he really is. And he's taking huge leaps forward. And his doctors are using words that I can't even pronounce. But they all mean great steps forward in a - in a huge way. So that's really enough communication that Damar needs to give us for us to understand what that true message is and that he's winning that fight. So, that's a - it's a -- it's a great - it's a great feeling.

LEMON: You think the team is ready or willing to get back on the field this weekend?

DAWKINS: You know, it will be so hard to speak for everybody, but like I know that in the position that they have put us in, and from the messages that we're getting back and from the responses that we're getting from Cincinnati and his family, it's putting us in a - in a great arrow of direction. And that's honestly all we can ask for is just to be faced in the right direction and to just do it with high hopes and high grace. But, you know, McDermott and the staff here, like, they've been doing such a great job of respecting the individuals' personal battles because we're all go - like going through personal battles with this situation. So, with the -- like the staff here, with Josh, with all of our guys that are just doing everything in the right way to keep everybody in a positive bubble, like I would say that they're in doing so. So, you know, sorry that I really can't answer that directly, but hopefully that answers that question.

LEMON: Yes, listen, we got it.

DAWKINS: Yes.

LEMON: Dion, you have been so great during all of this. There's a lightness that you didn't have in the initial interviews that we saw. And it's good to see you feeling better, and, of course, the good news about Damar.

Thank you so much, sir. You be well.

DAWKINS: Yes.

LEMON: Thank you.

Poppy.

HARLOW: You're right about that, there really is, Don. Thank you for that.

Just in to CNN, the December jobs report. Christine Romans and Rahel Solomon have all the numbers, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:41:18]

HARLOW: Just in to CNN, the December jobs report. The U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs last month.

Let's get to chief business correspondent and anchor of "EARLY START," Christine Romans, and CNN business correspondent Rahel Solomon.

So.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a strong number but it is cooling, right? And so I think this might be the goldilocks report that so many on Wall Street wanted to see. 223,000 jobs added and 3.5 percent the unemployment rate. That's a drop in the unemployment rate. Some people entered the labor market looking for work.

The unemployment rate, if you look at the long chart here, it was revised actually, November to be 3.6 percent. So you can see that long decline in the unemployment rate. Those are jobs added. So you can see jobs added, that is the weakest in a couple of years. And that's what Wall Street wants to see. They want to see a job market that is solid but not spinning off inflation.

When I look over there at some of the sectors here, leisure and hospitality, health care, construction, 28,000, manufacturing, 8,000 jobs added there. You're still seeing widespread hiring in the country outside of tech and in some cases media. But in other parts of the economy, you're still seeing some strength here.

And, guys, Wall Street likes this because it's cooling, but I want to put it in perspective, 4.5 million jobs created last year. That is the second highest on record after only the year before.

HARLOW: Wow.

ROMANS: That's 4.5 million jobs. You go back to the go-go Reagan days. The best then was like 3.8 million.

HARLOW: You -

ROMANS: And 4.5 million jobs created in the most recent year. That's something. But the slowing more recently, that's the goldilocks' part, I think, that's so important.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's welcome news to the Fed, as Christine pointed out. And for people at home, I think it still indicates a strong labor market, right? We don't want to confuse people when we say a cooling labor market. It is still a strong labor market. I mean we have gotten a slew of labor data this week that shows there's still more than 10 million open jobs, 1.7 open jobs for every one person looking.

But what we're starting to see in this report, as Christine pointed out, is that wages are starting to slow, right? So, wages came in at 0.3 percent monthly. That's a little bit lower than expectations on a yearly level. That also came in lighter than expectations. The concern for people who are and thinking, well, why are wages going up a bad thing? The Fed has been concerned that some of those higher wages could be trickling into higher prices, which all of us are dealing with.

So, again, it's the goldilocks. It's the slowing but not the sort of ice cold water on a labor market that still remains pretty strong.

ROMANS: Yes. More on those wages. So, on an annual basis, that's 4.6 percent wage growth. That's a nice pay raise. We worried that it was more like 5 percent or higher. Having wage growth in the 4 percent range shows the Fed's medicine has been working so far. That's what you want to see. All of this aggressive medicine from the Fed is actually doing something to take the temperature down on the patient.

SOLOMON: You know and -

LEMON: It's kind of weird to sit here and say - you know, and hear you guys go, but this was slower and this was lower, and that's great because it's just so counterintuitive. ROMANS: I know, right.

SOLOMON: I know. You need to condition it because it's sort of like, what are you talking about?

You know, I talked to Nela Richardson, she's the chief economist at ADP, a private payroll provider, yesterday, because we got a different labor report yesterday. And I asked her, for people at home, I mean, how would you describe the labor market? And she said something that I thought was so interesting. She said strong but fragmented. And the reason why I mentioned that is because for certain industries you actually may not be feeling what we're talking about, right, if you are in tech, if you are in --

HARLOW: I was just going to say, all those layoffs again this week.

SOLOMON: Exactly. And I think that's confirmed by some of the anecdotes that we hear about. If you are in areas of the economy that are very sensitive to higher interest rates, you're probably not experiencing what we're talking about. But you can probably find a job pretty quickly because there overall is so much demand for workers right now.

ROMANS: You've been hearing about the Amazon layoffs this week, 18,000, the most they've ever laid off. And I was looking at that number thinking, wow. I mean that's tough at Amazon. You know that Amazon hired a million people since 2018.

HARLOW: You sound like my husband.

[08:45:00]

He's like, Poppy, that's nothing.

SOLOMON: Perspective. Context.

ROMANS: Your husband is a smart guy.

SOLOMON: Yes.

ROMANS: But, you know - you know, Salesforce, you know, they were laying off 10 percent of the workforce and the CEO has said, you know, look, he kind of said, I'm sorry, we were hiring - we thought this was going to last forever, and it didn't.

SOLOMON: We over hired.

ROMANS: So, look, you're seeing a recalibration. And at least for now, a little sign of cooling in what has been a hot job market.

LEMON: And they think that this is -- this won't spook the market, right?

ROMANS: No, look at the markets right now.

SOLOMON: Doesn't seem to be. Futures were up.

LEMON: That's what I'm saying, I was -

ROMANS: They love the wage number.

HARLOW: We'll take it.

ROMANS: I swear that is - that is the wage number. They love the wage number because higher wages spark inflation and they want inflation to go down.

HARLOW: Thank you, guys.

LEMON: Fingers, hands -

SOLOMON: Toes.

LEMON: Being crossed.

All right, thank you, guys. We appreciate it.

It's decision day for a new experimental Alzheimer's drug. What the FDA is expected to do, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:24]

LEMON: So, this morning, the FDA is expected to reveal its decision on an experimental Alzheimer's drug. It could potentially delay the progression in some people with the disease by years. But a clinical trial did reveal the drug has risks.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): At first the signs can be subtle, missing your exit on the freeway, forgetting what you need at the grocery store, misplacing your keys.

JACK DRISCOLL (ph), ALZHEIMER'S PATIENT: I'll look at my phone and read the names and a lot of them don't mean anything to me.

GUPTA: Your life marches on, independently, but the markers of memory slowly, surely begin to fade. That's what early Alzheimer's feels like.

When 80-year-old Jack Driscoll got his own Alzheimer's diagnosis in 2019, he was doing OK, but he worried what his future would eventually have in store.

DRISCOLL: I talked to my wife and I talked to my kids and let them know that maybe down the road I wasn't going to be the same as I was then. GUPTA: So, in 2021, Jack enrolled in a clinical trial for an

experimental drug called Lecanemab, now pending approval by the FDA, this drug could help postpone the fate of those with early Alzheimer's. In part, by removing amyloid plaques from the brain.

DR. RICHARD ISAACSON: We're finding that this specific type of amyloid, when removed, actually associates or correlates with a slowing of cognitive decline.

GUPTA: Most importantly, clinical trials of the drug found that it slowed cognitive decline in people with early Alzheimer's by 27 percent. But what does that mean? According to models by the drug maker, someone who is 80, like Jack, could experience a two to three- year delay in progression to worsening of his Alzheimer's disease.

ISAACSON: We've been targeting Alzheimer's disease at the end stage when people have dementia where they can no longer take care of themselves and the pathology and the plaques and the tangles have built up and by that time there's not as much we can do.

GUPTA: But nothing comes without risks. And the ones that come with this type of drug have raised red flags.

DR. SHARON COHEN (ph): We have known for many years that with almost all of the drugs in this class there can be a side effect of ARIA.

GUPTA: Dr. Sharon Cohen has been studying Alzheimer's drugs for 30 years and was part of the clinical trial for Lecanemab. What she is talking about, ARIA, is Amyloid Related Imaging Abnormality. It can look like this or this. It's brain swelling or brain bleeding. Though Cohen says these types of side effects were mostly mild in the trial.

COHEN: We do know that Lecanemab has a low rate of causing macro hemorrhage, not necessarily fatal, but a low rate, less than 1 percent.

GUPTA: In the phase three clinical trial, there were seven deaths in the placebo group and six deaths in the Lecanemab group. According to the investigators, though, none of the deaths were considered to be due to Lecanemab or ARIA. "The New England Journal of Medicine" recently published details of an additional death of a patient on the drug who had been given blood thinners, raising additional concerns.

COHEN: It's pretty hard to say Lecanemab caused that when you're giving a drug that itself can cause significant bleeding. However, the combination gives us pause.

GUPTA: Neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson agrees that while this drug shows promise, it must come with caution. For example, avoiding blood thinners while taking the medication.

ISAACSON: I will prescribe this drug in the right person at the right dose and in a very carefully monitored way, but this drug is not for everyone. GUPTA: For Jack, the possibility of continuing to live a full life,

spending quality time with all four children and all nine grandchildren, even for just a while longer, well, that is worth the risk.

DRISCOLL: As far as I'm concerned, we're having a great life right now and things are good and my wife is a wonderful caretaker. So, we get it with each other and we know what we're living with.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: So, Don, it's not a home run, but it can buy those years of, you know, sort of significant Alzheimer's disease progression-free life. And that's, I think, why Jack sort of balances the rewards as being greater than the risks.

We'll see what the FDA does.

[08:55:02]

A couple things I'm going to be looking out for is, how are they going to address this concern about bleeding? Is there going to be a warning specifically, a black box warning, that it should not be taken with blood thinners. A lot of people that age do take blood thinners. They're going to have to balance that.

The second thing is cost. I mean, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the cost of some of these drugs, Don, but Aducanumab, another drug that was -- came out is $28,000 a year. These are really expensive. And, again, how do you - you know, there's going to be a lot of people who potentially could qualify. How do you - how do you sort of adjust for that cost as well, Don?

LEMON: Yes, there are some risks that need to be taken seriously and looked at, but it is progress, and we'll take the progress.

GUPTA: Yes.

LEMON: Thank you, Sanjay. Really appreciate it.

GUPTA: You got it.

HARLOW: Well, some news out of Washington. We just got word of a meeting on The Hill with Republicans over the fate of Kevin McCarthy. Stand by.

LEMON: Oh, boy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Oh, Kaitlan, hopefully some news you have that's going to change things, get this over with?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, no announcement of a speaker yet, sorry, Don and Poppy. But we did hear - you know, Manu and Lauren are reporting that there is going to be that 10:15 a.m. conference call with Republicans. It's notable that it's not in-person that they're going to be meeting, talk about this. But they are going to have a call to see what the next steps are.

[09:00:01]

And one of the things that David Valadao, that Republican that we were speaking with, that said - that stood out to me was saying, you know, they still want to see a good look of what it was that was happening in these negotiations yesterday with these hardliners of what that's actually going to look like, whether or not it's actually going to get Kevin McCarthy any closer to holding the speaker's gavel.

LEMON: I think Kevin - I think he wants to show momentum at least at this - at the very least at this point, but, you know, an end to it, a speaker, would be nice.

COLLINS: Yes.

HARLOW: Come home. See you Monday.

COLLINS: We'll see.

HARLOW: Great job this week with all that coverage, Kaitlan, thank you.

LEMON: Yes, we'll see you next -- we'll see you on Monday.

HARLOW: And - yes.

Thanks everyone for hanging out with us this week.

LEMON: Yes.

HARLOW: Have a good, safe weekend. We'll see you Monday.

CNN "NEWSROOM" is now.

LEMON: Have a great weekend.