AT&T: Letting Us Buy Time Warner Will Be "Good For Consumers"

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I often wonder how CEO's of huge companies actually keep a straight face when they say stuff like this. I don't think I could do it. I honestly think I would bust up laughing trying to feed that line of bull to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“We will be able to innovate more quickly, experiment more readily, tweak our offerings as we gauge customer response, and bring consumers the options they seek,” Stephenson says. “We want to give customers more control of how they watch their video content … we are in an ideal position to do that because of our own mobile network … we expect to deliver mobile-optimized content and services, and ad-supported services that shift more costs from consumers to advertisers.”
 
Steve said:
ad-supported services that shift more costs from consumers to advertisers
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When cable TV came out, they promised the customer would pay for the content and not the ads. Then they figured out they could have commercials AND still charge the customer for service. Twice the income for the cable company. Now we pay for the content AND the ads. I'm pretty sure this will end up the same.
 
Bandalo said:
When cable TV came out, they promised the customer would pay for the content and not the ads. Then they figured out they could have commercials AND still charge the customer for service. Twice the income for the cable company. Now we pay for the content AND the ads. I'm pretty sure this will end up the same.
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Still a luxury item. If consumers want it, they will pay. Providers know they can get away with it, they are stupid not to do it as long as there are enough pawns to keep buying the service.

Enjoy the time before movies have mandatory intermissions to broadcast ads, all pro sports teams have adds on their uniforms and rules on bombarding your cell phones with advertising junk. That's just scraping the surface in our corporate monopolistic world...
 
Yes, nothing says we can "Innovate more quickly" by companies #10 and #99 on the Fortune 100 list, going from 280k employees to 305k employees is really going to give you that last little bit of capacity you were otherwise missing!
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
Still a luxury item. If consumers want it, they will pay. Providers know they can get away with it, they are stupid not to do it as long as there are enough pawns to keep buying the service.

Enjoy the time before movies have mandatory intermissions to broadcast ads, all pro sports teams have adds on their uniforms and rules on bombarding your cell phones with advertising junk. That's just scraping the surface in our corporate monopolistic world...
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True and terrifying...I think Futurama had it right with the ads being beamed directly into your dreams at night.
 
How are monopolies good for consumers. The reason they were broken up was because consumers had no options and were getting screwed with billing on everything. Now that at&t is buying everything in sight it's happening more now. They have all this money too buy other competition but "no money" for internet infrastructure upgrades.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
Still a luxury item. If consumers want it, they will pay. Providers know they can get away with it, they are stupid not to do it as long as there are enough pawns to keep buying the service.

Enjoy the time before movies have mandatory intermissions to broadcast ads, all pro sports teams have adds on their uniforms and rules on bombarding your cell phones with advertising junk. That's just scraping the surface in our corporate monopolistic world...
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Yep, and that's why I cancelled cable and more and more people will be but then they just raise the price of internet and add data caps to recoup the money since the same company provides cable tv and your internet.
 
burton14e7 said:
Yep, and that's why I cancelled cable and more and more people will be but then they just raise the price of internet and add data caps to recoup the money since the same company provides cable tv and your internet.
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Winner. The main issue is that our internet is coupled with our content providers and we allow them to hold us hostage. Along with asking the same government that created the monopolies to now go in and regulate them.

True network TV with ads is dead, on demand is the future. However, they are able to cling to it because they also control the internet. One of our ISPs got so big it purchased NBC for f's sake.

Next is on demand with forced ads and that will suck to.

A simple solution is TRUE (not this shit we have now) net neutrality, no data caps, and require ISPs to delivery guaranteed bandwidth (no fine print "up to depending on network congestion" crap). Make ISPs compete for users and make content providers compete with viewers.
 
XvMMvX said:
Next is on demand with forced ads and that will suck to.
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That's been here for quite some time, at least with Comcast. Want to watch a popular show OnDemand? Be prepared to not be able to fast forward.

At the moment my only hope is that Google Fiber finishes rolling out in Nashville, and I'm able to sign up with them.
 
"and bring consumers the options they seek," I'm still seeking lower prices and more unbundled individual choices at lower prices as they AT&T are, not before another merger with even less competitive choices.
 
I could have sworn Charter just bought Time Warner. How is ATT trying to buy it now?
 
Don't worry folks, this merger will get the green-light soon enough. Obviously it will come just in time for the next presidential election with the stipulation that they must offer an affordable rate for qualifying low income families which will be paid for by government subsidies. It will get the name "Trumpnet" and millions of poor families across Murica will rejoice as they will finally have a low-cost internet service to use with their government subsidized phones and their government subsidized housing.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
I could have sworn Charter just bought Time Warner. How is ATT trying to buy it now?
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Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia!


Seriously, though, some PR spins are really clever and, even though it's obvious that they're defending the indefensible, you have to bow your head in admiration at the art with which they pull excuses and weave them into something almost coherent (or at least so muddled that you can't quite pinpoint where the incoherence lies). This guy is not even trying. Nowhere did he even attempt to make up some reason why Time Warner would help any company "experiment" or "innovate" or "gauge customer response" any differently than they already do, much less AT&T. Couldn't they make something up that even touched upon any of Time Warner's real strengths? What does AT&T's PR guy do with his time?
 
d8lock said:
Charter bought Time Warner Cable. Time Warner and TWC are different companies. TW creates content, like HBO etc.
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Ok. Now I see. I'm assuming TWC was a division underneath Time Warner, and Charter basically bought that chunk of the business only leaving the whole media monster known as AOL Time Warner.

Now the question is, why the hell would ATT want that sinking ship? :p
 
remember when they broke up at&t in the 80's?

lot of good that did.

now they are bigger and more powerful than before.

now i get what obi wan meant.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Ok. Now I see. I'm assuming TWC was a division underneath Time Warner, and Charter basically bought that chunk of the business only leaving the whole media monster known as AOL Time Warner.

Now the question is, why the hell would ATT want that sinking ship? :p
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at&t was the sinking ship in this deal, I'm just surprised TW went along with being swallowed up by them. As much debt at&t currently has it's going to be interesting to see how long they actually last if the deal goes through, because if they get the green light to acquire TW , the new at&t's net market cap would be around of $292,000,000,000 most of that net amount will be debt which would be something like $210,000,000,000 of debt.
 
I dont think there is an economics term for two oligopolies from two markets combining ... Its similar to a monopoly. However these oligopolies often receive public funding, niche markets without competitors and now it sounds like mobile zero streaming. (Aka good business in 2017)
 
Steve said:
I SWEAR, the next person that tries to take this thread political is going to get a big fat kick in the ass.

Keeo it on topic folks.
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This is all George washington's fault. Over 200 years ago he had the option to prevent this nonsense but apparently ATT sent a time traveler back and paid our founding fathers off.
 
Master_shake_ said:
remember when they broke up at&t in the 80's?

lot of good that did.

now they are bigger and more powerful than before.

now i get what obi wan meant.
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Actually, AT&T "died" from that breakup. They were just a long distance telephone company, and tried to get into the nascent mobile phone business, but were not doing well. One of the "baby bells" that resulted from the breakup - Southwestern Bell, bought AT&T. Since AT&T had better nation-wide name recognition, they switched to that as the main company name. So the current AT&T is not the AT&T that was broken up, but a new company.
 
AT&T, basically:
We promise not to do the thing we've always done after every other merger, and the thing every other giga-corporation has done after every merger. Promise.
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This is hilarious to see Ma Bell getting broken up into the discrete regional telephone providers, only to see them re-consolidate within two decades into a new singular tele-media giant like AT&T.
 
Methadras said:
This is hilarious to see Ma Bell getting broken up into the discrete regional telephone providers, only to see them re-consolidate within two decades into a new singular tele-media giant like AT&T.
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Exactly. And as long as Verizon and Comcast exist as "competition" then the anti-trust suits have little leg to stand on. Pay no attention the illegal collusion between the companies, right?
 
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