• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

AT&T/Time-Warner merger

The WSJ obtained a sworn legal affidavit and it says AT&T did ask if The DOJ would approve the deal they sold only CNN, the DOJ rejected that idea.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-th...at-t-could-alter-american-business-1521137209

One of the conditions FCC gave Comcast when they purchased NBCU was they had to make its RSN's NBC Sports Philadelphia and Northwest available to competing satellite providers. Those RSN's are still not on Dish and Directv, they are very interested to carry them, the satellite companies have taken comcast to court several times. Analysts estimate that the satellite companies are losing a half million customers in Philadelphia alone. It will be interesting how this affects the AT&T deal.
 
Good information. It demonstrates that AT&T was at least, on some level, willing to consider the divesture if it meant the deal would be approved. It also demonstrates that the lawsuit isn't about CNN, but about legitimate antitrust concerns. The trial will be soon, and then there will be no more need to speculate on the outcome.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Here is an article that reuters written about the AT&T Deal. one of these talking point mentioned is to compete against youtube, facebook, netflix.
Click to expand...

In this article, the government uses the NCAA playoffs as an example. But TBS or Time Warner don't own the NCAA Playoffs. Their current deal is split between CBS and TBS. But ownership is retained by the NCAA. If TBS were to do what the government alleges, it would be in violation of their agreement with the NCAA. The NCAA can take their event to competitors. In fact, this year's NCAA playoffs are also on Facebook. The real monopoly, the real threat to the consumer, comes from the owners of the content, which in this case is the NCAA. Their rights fee is what's driving up costs.
 
https://www.fiercecable.com/video/time-warner-execs-questioning-at-t-deal-report-says

Update on the Time Warner/ AT&T Deal

The court battle continues between AT&T and the Justice Department over antitrust concerns with the $85 billion Time Warner acquisition, and it could be causing some executives to second-guess the deal.

According to Vanity Fair, some Time Warner executives are beginning to wonder: Should the court proceedings extend past the merger deadline, would Time Warner benefit from being able to walk away and possibly get a better offer?

The merger deadline is currently set for June 21, 2018. That’s the second extension the companies have put in place; the first deadline was moved from Oct. 22, 2017, to April 22, 2018.

As the report pointed out, passing the merger deadline could give Time Warner a chance to renegotiate merger terms, which are currently based on Time Warner’s value from mid-2016. Time Warner could also sell itself off in pieces if it decides to not move forward with a revised AT&T deal after the deadline.

“It used to be, well, the devil you know. And now it’s kind of like, you know, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to see who else is out there. The one thing people pretty much know is, if it happens, we’ll have a whole new world under AT&T. If it doesn’t happen, we’ll probably not be a standalone company for very long,” a person familiar with the matter told the publication.
Click to expand...
 
Seems to me there's some kind of penalty involved if the deal falls through. It's probably specified earlier in this thread.

Might be different if Time Warner decides to walk away, as opposed to AT&T.

But I'd agree as time goes on, the assets are becoming more valuable.

Imagine if Netflix, Google, or Apple bought Time Warner.
 
If TW were to walk away, they'd be doing a big favor to AT&T. Such an action would allow them to gracefully walk away. TW would be unlikely to get a better price, AT&T agreed to absurd terms. If TW management really thinks they can pull this off, they'd have to indicate their intent to walk away before they could formally negotiate with anyone else. Just doing that would likely be enough of a trigger for AT&T to walk away. I suspect the Fierce Cable article is TW trying to start this process through media leaks.

Now, if TW walks away and restructures the company and begins to properly manage it, then, after some time, it might be able to get a better offer. This might be the best outcome AT&T can hope for.
 
umfan said:
If TW management really thinks they can pull this off, they'd have to indicate their intent to walk away before they could formally negotiate with anyone else.
Click to expand...

They can't do anything until after June 21. If the trial drags on beyond that date, then they might walk away.
 
So now Apple buys Netflix, opening the door for Amazon to make an offer for Time Warner.

We all know what the president thinks of Jeff Bezos. Here we go again.
 
https://www.fiercecable.com/video/c...aid-mso-would-be-better-off-turner-s-networks

Interesting take on the what if scenarios for charter

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ed-tweaked-charter-study-to-boost-merger-case

Stefan Bewley, a director at consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Co. who assembled a subscriber-loss study for Charter, said the MSO would be better off without Turner’s networks.

The detail, highlighted in a new research report from BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, was revealed during the trial over the Justice Department’s attempt to block AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the parent company of Turner.

Bewley said during the trial that, from his perspective, Charter would be better off and save a lot of money by dropping Turner. As Greenfield points out, the DOJ’s use of the study, which is part of its defense that Turner’s channels are valuable and would therefore give AT&T too much leverage over its distribution rivals in carriage consent negotiations, is ironic considering Charter CEO Tom Rutledge’s comments from late in 2016.

Rutledge told Bloomberg that any company that owns both content and distribution has to honor the content side of things first because “if you crater the content business, you can destroy a lot of value. And so nobody’s ever been able to reach the distribution scale they need to sort of go exclusive and use it as a real differentiation tool.”

Earlier in the trial, Charter’s lead programming negotiator, Tom Montemagno, testified that he had only skimmed the report but acknowledged that similar programming to what Turner offers could be found for less money on other channels, according to Bloomberg.

Both details seem to belie the notion that owning Turner would give AT&T undue power over other pay TV distributors and could eventually cause consumer costs to rise, one of the DOJ’s chief arguments against the merger.

In trial prebriefs, the DOJ cited University of California, Berkeley, economics professor Carl Shapiro’s research amid concerns about rising consumer costs if the AT&T-Time Warner merger goes through.

"If TV program distributor AT&T acquires TV-program producer Time Warner, American consumers will end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars more than they do now to watch their favorite programs on TV," the DOJ wrote. "In short, the transaction violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act, because its effect 'may be substantially to lessen competition.' Prices for current services will go up and development of emerging competition will slow down.”
Click to expand...
 
Charter should go and buy Time Warner and get into the content business since they aren't as big as the evil empire known as AT&T which they are as big as they were in the 80's.
 
https://www.fiercecable.com/video/at-t-ceo-testifies-to-benefits-time-warner-merger

Update on AT&T

An example of a lower-cost options for consumers surfaced when Stephenson unveiled AT&T’s plans to launch a streaming service called AT&T Watch. The service, a $15-per-month TV offering with no sports, is coming soon and will be free for AT&T’s unlimited wireless customers.

Beyond just pay-TV, Stephenson detailed digital advertising aspirations that AT&T could achieve by owning Time Warner. He said by pushing Time Warner content like CNN, TBS, TNT and HBO out toward mobile devices, AT&T could better compete against Google and Facebook for digital advertising dollars.



Leading up to the trial, Stephenson made similar comments about AT&T needing more scale to fend off surging media players like Amazon and Netflix.

Stephenson in February told CNBC that concerns about AT&T-Time Warner having too much control over content creation and distribution lose some merit in light of what companies like Amazon and Netflix have been able to do.

“There’s this concern about vertical integration, having everything from content creation, content aggregation to content distribution,” Stephenson told CNBC. “Reality is, the biggest distributor of content out there is totally vertically integrated. This happens to be somebody called Netflix. They create original content, they aggregate original content and they distribute original content. They have 100 million subscribers. Look at Amazon; they’re doing the exact same thing.”
Click to expand...
 
So they offer this until the deal gets approved and then drop it. Justice should allow them to do the deal only if they agree to offer a real, low cost skinny bundle and across the board a la carte with fair pricing for the next $25 years at fixed rates. AT&T would never agree as this is nothing but a poorly executed ploy to try to get a deal that is bad for consumers approved.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom