AT&T Buying Time Warner For $85.4 Billion

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Does this $85 billion deal remind anyone of the AOL / Time Warner deal sixteen years ago? That deal, considered one of the worst mergers of all time, will no doubt be brought up over and over as the pundits wring their hands over what could go wrong with this deal.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which AT&T will acquire Time Warner in a stock-and-cash transaction valued at $107.50 per share. The agreement has been approved unanimously by the boards of directors of both companies. The deal combines Time Warner's vast library of content and ability to create new premium content that connects with audiences around the world, with AT&T's extensive customer relationships, world’s largest pay TV subscriber base and leading scale in TV, mobile and broadband distribution.
 
Its america, free makret yada yada yada. ... but you have one oligopoly from one sector (delivery service) merging with one oligopoly from another sector (creators of the content)... creating a monopoly from a group that will be both the creator and deliverer of a service... who can then control the prices of their competitors that compete with the original oligopoly (delivery service). This is a mess. Similar to BP I suppose and other like services (deliver, producer, seller) except BP can't price fix due to competition from other deliverer, producer, sellers etc.

Yikes I don't think this is good in the golden era of digital media.
 
I say GOOD!
Let AT&T buy them and every other company AT&T wants to buy.
Let them grow like they did in the 70s and 80s until the GOV'T steps in and breaks them up.

They didn't learn the first time with copper telephone wires and it looks like they are doing the same thing with Internet and media.
 
The Gonz said:
I say GOOD!
Let AT&T buy them and every other company AT&T wants to buy.
Let them grow like they did in the 70s and 80s until the GOV'T steps in and breaks them up.

They didn't learn the first time with copper telephone wires and it looks like they are doing the same thing with Internet and media.
Click to expand...
They are the government and have been since the 90's.
 
So, ATT is buying everything EXCEPT Time Warner Cable?? Or am I wrong?

Didn't Time Warner Cable just sell to Charter or someone??
 
This one already has detractors on "both" sides of Congress. I imagine some push back on yet another consolidation in an already non-competitive market place
 
"
"Customer Benefits"

"The new company will deliver what customers want" at a price they don't want.
 
I'm not getting the AOL/time warner comparison. That was kind of an inverted WTF moment where you had to ask what was secretly broken in the warner camp someone was trying to hide. It didn't make a lot of sense.

This is just AT&T trying to build a comcast equivalent, which is playing me too to a very functional company making lots of money.
 
I'm sure there will be a hearing on this, at which point I hope that little loophole they exploited (with the low income assistance program which was condition of the DirectTV purchase) is brought up.
 
Just waiting for the day when one corp owns everything. Every year corps keep consolidating, eventually maybe after 20 more years it'll be one corp rules them all.
 
Galvin said:
Just waiting for the day when one corp owns everything. Every year corps keep consolidating, eventually maybe after 20 more years it'll be one corp rules them all.
Click to expand...

We certainly don't want the Franchise Wars to happen.
 
Galvin said:
Just waiting for the day when one corp owns everything. Every year corps keep consolidating, eventually maybe after 20 more years it'll be one corp rules them all.
Click to expand...

and under that "Umbrella" corp the world will be right as rain :D
 
The Gonz said:
I say GOOD!
Let AT&T buy them and every other company AT&T wants to buy.
Let them grow like they did in the 70s and 80s until the GOV'T steps in and breaks them up.

They didn't learn the first time with copper telephone wires and it looks like they are doing the same thing with Internet and media.
Click to expand...

Oh, you mean like when governmental granted AT&T franchise monopolies because they are thought to be "natural monopolies." Because "economies of scale" would lower prices for consumers? Why does everyone forget that the government nationalized the industry in 1918, because of the world war, and "By 1925 not only had virtually every state established strict rate regulation guidelines, but local telephone competition was either discouraged or explicitly prohibited within many of those jurisdictions.". This is called regulator capture. Before that once AT&T's initial patents expired in 1893, dozens of competitors sprung up. "By the end of 1894 over 80 new independent competitors had already grabbed 5 percent of total market share … after the turn of the century, over 3,000 competitors existed. In some states there were over 200 telephone companies operating simultaneously. By 1907, AT&T's competitors had captured 51 percent of the telephone market and prices were being driven sharply down by the competition. So yeah, lets praise the government for breaking up the very monster it created and would not have existed without their nationalization of the industry.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Oh, you mean like when governmental granted AT&T franchise monopolies because they are thought to be "natural monopolies." Because "economies of scale" would lower prices for consumers? Why does everyone forget that the government nationalized the industry in 1918, because of the world war, and "By 1925 not only had virtually every state established strict rate regulation guidelines, but local telephone competition was either discouraged or explicitly prohibited within many of those jurisdictions.". This is called regulator capture. Before that once AT&T's initial patents expired in 1893, dozens of competitors sprung up. "By the end of 1894 over 80 new independent competitors had already grabbed 5 percent of total market share … after the turn of the century, over 3,000 competitors existed. In some states there were over 200 telephone companies operating simultaneously. By 1907, AT&T's competitors had captured 51 percent of the telephone market and prices were being driven sharply down by the competition. So yeah, lets praise the government for breaking up the very monster it created and would not have existed without their nationalization of the industry.
Click to expand...
Unless you thought I meant 1870 AND 1880 than no. That's not what I meant at all.
 
The Gonz said:
Unless you thought I meant 1870 AND 1880 than no. That's not what I meant at all.
Click to expand...

I know what you meant, all of the monopoly that has happened in the telco area has been government created. Just that in these first few cases, they were open about only wanting a single company having control. Today it is the exact same, they create a monster, and decades later "break it up" or do something to stop the "free market" from taking advantage of the people. :facepalm:

Even after nationalization ended, AT&T was still massive, even after the first few attempts to break them up, they kept on growing because of other government forces keeping them there such as exclusionary licensing policies, protected monopolies for "dominant carriers", guaranteed revenues or regulated phone companies, the mandated government policy of "universal telephone entitlement" which called for a single provider to more easily carry out regulatory commands, and rate regulation designed to achieve the socialistic objective of "universal service." All of this is what the 1984 break up was about, however none of this has changed and we are still stuck with government enforced protectionism.
 
Hey US Government, feel free to step in here at any time... oh wait, they don't give a shit about consumers. I wonder why they broke up AT&T in the first place.
 
Burticus said:
Hey US Government, feel free to step in here at any time... oh wait, they don't give a shit about consumers. I wonder why they broke up AT&T in the first place.
Click to expand...

Because there were larger donors pulling the puppet strings...
 
The Gonz said:
I say GOOD!
Let AT&T buy them and every other company AT&T wants to buy.
Let them grow like they did in the 70s and 80s until the GOV'T steps in and breaks them up.

They didn't learn the first time with copper telephone wires and it looks like they are doing the same thing with Internet and media.
Click to expand...

ATT is bigger now than it was when it was broken up originally.
 
Burticus said:
Hey US Government, feel free to step in here at any time... oh wait, they don't give a shit about consumers. I wonder why they broke up AT&T in the first place.
Click to expand...


Both Bernie and Trump were condemning it FWIW
 
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