Government Signals Approval Of AT&T-DirecTV Merger

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It looks as though the AT&T-DirecTV merger has been given the thumbs up by the Federal Communications Commission earlier today.

On Tuesday Chairman Tom Wheeler shared his approval recommendation with the FCC's other four commissioners. The other government agency reviewing the proposed deal, the Justice Department, also gave its blessing on Tuesday by ending what it called an "extensive investigation" into the proposal. FCC approval would come with some conditions, as is common in proposed deals of this size.
 
OTA, netflix, hulu+, Amazon Prime, Sling TV, HBO GO...................... By By By attu-direct-U-TV
 
mullet said:
OTA, netflix, hulu+, Amazon Prime, Sling TV, HBO GO...................... By By By attu-direct-U-TV
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Gave up DirecTV months ago. There are two companies that will never receive another penny from me......AT&T and Creative. Time-Warner would be on the list, but they currently have me over a barrel.
 
This is bad for DirecTV customers.

mullet said:
OTA, netflix, hulu+, Amazon Prime, Sling TV, HBO GO...................... By By By attu-direct-U-TV
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None of those services offer live sports. If you don't watch sports you are probably one of those people in a hippy family that is "happy" with Over the Air TV services.
 
LBJM said:
This is bad for DirecTV customers.




None of those services offer live sports. If you don't watch sports you are probably one of those people in a hippy family that is "happy" with Over the Air TV services.
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lol lovely... you must be one of the "sports" watching meat heads... you know one of those with their high school trophies displayed so everyone knows when you actually lived a life (your guest won't tell you that). Is your name Al Bundy?

Do I really think the above? No, just trying to make a point that not EVERYONE watches sports. Comments demeaning people because they don't like what you like (or even what a lot of people like) is just poor taste imo.

I think its perfectly valid you would make your entertainment choices based on the sports content available if you value that content. I guess I am lucky I value that content less and have more options (but the misses is tied to the cooking channel so /shrug).
 
Any conditions of this deal are a function of enforcement. None of which will happen.
 
This fucking blows. DirecTV is an excellent company with stellar customer service. ATT is the exact opposite. fuck
 
yay! less competition which means crappier products and services for us customers. yay!
 
LBJM said:
None of those services offer live sports.
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http://www.gomohu.com/blog/over-the-air-tv-schedule-of-sports-events/
Nope, no live sports what so ever.

While you can't be picky, and if you must watch one of those sports that has way too many fucking games in a season (e.g. baseball/basketball) then yeah you might be out of luck, but for me I'm all about football, real football, not that pansy college crap, and the NFL is still strong on Fox, NBC, CBS for the time being, while MNF and TNF are out, if they're one of the two local teams then they also broadcast on local channels too. Sure that might change in the future, but fact of the matter is most sports you can't watch on DirecTV anyways unless you are paying for those premium packages.
 
Giving up on wasting my time and money following sports and canceling my DirecTV subscription are two of the best decisions I've ever made.
 
Pretty funny that I started out working for AT&T broadband that got sold to Comcast and now they're back into the TV business. They could have just kept it all along.
 
sfsuphysics said:
but fact of the matter is most sports you can't watch on DirecTV anyways unless you are paying for those premium packages.
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NFL Sunday ticket is only available on DirecTV. Google pussed out and didn't make a deal. That is the only package that matters to me.
 
bloodhawke83 said:
"extensive investigation" = pay offs. ;)
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To be fair the FCC did recently block the largest proposed telcom merger ever with the Comcast-TW deal and the AT&T-T-Mobile deal a few years ago. They can't block every merger and I don't think this one comes close to the level of potential consumer harm of the other two.
 
LBJM said:
NFL Sunday ticket is only available on DirecTV. Google pussed out and didn't make a deal. That is the only package that matters to me.
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I wish the NFL would just sell it's games online and directly offer Sunday Ticket. I'm assuming they haven't done so yet because of network affiliate or sponsor issues.
 
Well, Now Directv will have internet to compete with the other cable companies. Too bad they picked up a shitty ISP.

Ah well, no skin off my ass, since I got WoW internet and cut the cable cord a bit ago - Netflix is a godsend.
 
Well this fucking sucks. I love DirecTV and especially Sunday Ticket. I will, however, never willingly give a fucking penny to ATT. Fuck. That. Company.

Long story short, I had to sue them to fix my credit because they sent an invalid $1000+ bill that I didn't even know existed to collections...all while I was deployed for 12 months. Initially when I told them of their fuckup, they dragged their feet for 6 months before telling me "LOL too bad fucker" (paraphrased, obviously). Then I had to hire a lawyer, sued them, AND THEY FUCKING FOUGHT IT! They lost, were ordered to fix my credit, and pay partial legal fees. You know what they did? They fixed my credit, and then tried to skip out on paying my lawyer. They literally sent a check for half of the ordered amount, and then didn't send the rest for another year. Oh, and while I was dealing with that bullshit company I was going through a messy ass divorce. Fuck ATT, I hope this deal goes horribly south....like all of DirecTV's satellites suddenly fall out of the sky immediately after the sale and land on ATT data centers or some shit.
 
heatlesssun said:
I wish the NFL would just sell it's games online and directly offer Sunday Ticket. I'm assuming they haven't done so yet because of network affiliate or sponsor issues.
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It's because DirecTV pays them ungodly amounts of money to keep it exclusive.
 
Grahamkracka said:
It's because DirecTV pays them ungodly amounts of money to keep it exclusive.
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I'd forgotten about this. But I would think that the NFL could do even better by cutting out the middle man and being able to sell to a much larger audience.
 
WOW = Wide Open West

They're a smaller, regional provider. They're in my area, but have never made a compelling argument as to why I should switch. It's not for a lack of trying, they have sales reps going door to door all the time.
 
Grahamkracka said:
Well this fucking sucks. I love DirecTV and especially Sunday Ticket. I will, however, never willingly give a fucking penny to ATT. Fuck. That. Company.

Long story short, I had to sue them to fix my credit because they sent an invalid $1000+ bill that I didn't even know existed to collections...all while I was deployed for 12 months. Initially when I told them of their fuckup, they dragged their feet for 6 months before telling me "LOL too bad fucker" (paraphrased, obviously). Then I had to hire a lawyer, sued them, AND THEY FUCKING FOUGHT IT! They lost, were ordered to fix my credit, and pay partial legal fees. You know what they did? They fixed my credit, and then tried to skip out on paying my lawyer. They literally sent a check for half of the ordered amount, and then didn't send the rest for another year. Oh, and while I was dealing with that bullshit company I was going through a messy ass divorce. Fuck ATT, I hope this deal goes horribly south....like all of DirecTV's satellites suddenly fall out of the sky immediately after the sale and land on ATT data centers or some shit.
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Please don't hold back.... let it all out brother! Now deep breath. I know your pain with ATT. They did the same shit with me. ATT also screwed my bill up but thankfully they finally fixed it. After the fix I dropped them for Sprint.

I would never ever go back to ATT-Cingular.
 
LBJM said:
NFL Sunday ticket is only available on DirecTV.
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Yes and as I said, that would be a premium upgrade, it looks like it cost about $42 for 6 months which in the grand scheme of things isn't much if you are an NFL junky that needs to watch every single game, but it's about half of what a premium channel cost (HBO, Showtime, etc.. well what they used to cost)

For me, I have 2 local teams, unfortunately one of them is the Oakland Raiders, but the one I do care about is always on OTA TV, and if I'm really needing to watch more usually there's another game or two on Fox, or CBS (or whomever has the AFC deal now). Best thing too, every playoff game is also on OTA tv as well.
 
Yeah,I've been thinking of switching to cable anyway. Directv is expensive and there's no easy way I know of to record shows unless you pay them the extra 10 bucks a month for DVR service.
 
timta2 said:
Giving up on wasting my time and money following sports and canceling my DirecTV subscription are two of the best decisions I've ever made.
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I just follow my football and baseball team and that's it and barely if then. Sports is an endeavor I don't care much for anymore. There really is better shit to do.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yes and as I said, that would be a premium upgrade, it looks like it cost about $42 for 6 months which in the grand scheme of things isn't much if you are an NFL junky that needs to watch every single game, but it's about half of what a premium channel cost (HBO, Showtime, etc.. well what they used to cost)

For me, I have 2 local teams, unfortunately one of them is the Oakland Raiders, but the one I do care about is always on OTA TV, and if I'm really needing to watch more usually there's another game or two on Fox, or CBS (or whomever has the AFC deal now). Best thing too, every playoff game is also on OTA tv as well.
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I'm a niner fan who lives in the East Bay and both our teams suck this season. Plus Oakland fans are really upset about the last few years.

It's not that I won't watch my Niners anymore, but I'd like to see more competitive games than I know they will provide us this season.

I have AT&T and they've been wonderful (it's not in my name after Comcast).
 
Less competition, definitely works well for consumers. How's that working out with those airline mergers?

Works out well, though. FTC gets paid a bunch of money to approve merger. Then DOJ gets to come in and fine them for a bunch of anti-competitive behavior but then issue toothless bullshit that allows them to continue the practices, just more quietly, for the next decade or two.

Repeat.

But if you didn't allow that, then you'd likely still get monopolies doing it, just even richer ones without the government payouts. Do you want to get screwed by one or the other... :(
 
TwistedAegis said:
Less competition, definitely works well for consumers. How's that working out with those airline mergers?

Works out well, though. FTC gets paid a bunch of money to approve merger. Then DOJ gets to come in and fine them for a bunch of anti-competitive behavior but then issue toothless bullshit that allows them to continue the practices, just more quietly, for the next decade or two.

Repeat.

But if you didn't allow that, then you'd likely still get monopolies doing it, just even richer ones without the government payouts. Do you want to get screwed by one or the other... :(
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Although consumers might be a little cranky with the airline mergers they actually are working to both our and their advantages ... the airlines were going bankrupt right and left in the deregulated environment (which was good for no one) ... the four carriers we have left are very stable now and although there is little price competition between them there is still some competition for the high end business traveler ... for the super budget traveler there are airlines like Frontier, Spirit, and others that compete in that space

Ultimately internet and cable competition will work the same ... having a dozen competitors is good for no one (the price might be lower but the companies are always on the verge of bankrupcy) ... with 3-5 strong big companies we can definitely get enough competition to drive performance and capabilities ... the gap on the cable/internet front isn't the number of players but the limited presence of most in the total market ... for the airlines there is limited competition only in the major hub cities (Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, etc), for the broader market and the more important international market they all compete with each other ... we just need to get more head to head competition among the big players who are left in the cable/ISP market ... if you had Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, Google, and Verizon in the top 50 markets we would have sufficient competition to offer more choices in price and performance (like what we have with air travel) ;)
 
But you don't have that competition going through most hubs. You have 80-90% concentration by a single airline at some major airports, which is the same issue with ISPs and TV providers. Satellite is different, but now if you merge satellite with land line, you're causing the same lack of competition.
 
TwistedAegis said:
But you don't have that competition going through most hubs. You have 80-90% concentration by a single airline at some major airports, which is the same issue with ISPs and TV providers. Satellite is different, but now if you merge satellite with land line, you're causing the same lack of competition.
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I think this merger was about cable coverage (where AT&T is weak) ... there is an additional variable in the cable market ... most of the content is owned by companies other than the cable providers (but also only a few companies) ... this makes for some tough negotiations (especially if you are a small player, like AT&T) ... you have seen this new toughness from the content providers several times over the last couple of years where the Networks or channels shutdown their service on providers who weren't agreeing to their pricing demands ... fewer and bigger cable providers makes this harder for content providers to do (as they might not be able to take the hit of a shutdown)
 
LBJM said:
If you don't watch sports you are probably one of those people in a hippy family that is "happy" with Over the Air TV services.
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I actually had to double check that this wasn't a Megalith post... lol. :p
 
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