AT&T Considers Buying Time Warner (bloomberg.com) 60
In what would likely be one of the largest telecommunications takeovers in American history, Bloomberg is reporting that ATT has discussed the idea of a possible merger or other partnership with Time Warner Inc (may be paywalled; alternate source). Bloomberg reports: The talks, which at this stage are informal, have focused on building relations between the companies rather than establishing the terms of a specific transaction, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are private. Neither side has yet hired a financial adviser, the people said. Acquiring Time Warner would give ATT, one of the biggest providers of pay-TV and of wireless and home internet service in the U.S., a collection of popular programming to offer to subscribers, from HBO to NBA basketball to the Cartoon Network. ATT CEO Randall Stephenson has been looking to add more content and original programming as part of his plan to transform the Dallas-based telecommunications company into a media and entertainment giant. Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes is a willing seller if he gets an offer he thinks is fair, said one of the people. Bewkes and his board rejected an $85-a-share approach in 2014 from Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox Inc., which valued Time Warner at more than $75 billion. Last year, ATT paid $48.5 billion to acquire satellite-TV provider DirecTV, its biggest deal in at least 10 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ATT has been developing an internet-based version of the pay-TV service, called DirecTV now.
Do not fuck with HBO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Do not fuck with HBO!
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Coming next season on HBO:
GAME OF PHONES!
Will Daenerys get a dead connection? Will the White Walkers expand their data plan? Find out more in the final season of Game of Phones.
Open Letter to AT&T (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear AT&T,
We already tried it. It didn't work out so well. You should learn from our mistakes.
Sincerely,
AOL
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Re:Comcast? (Score:5, Informative)
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Which is why virtually all of these articles (including this one) are incorrect about what's even available to be sold. Nobody knows what they're talking about. The original article even featured a photo of TWC.
How about Yahoo? (Score:5, Funny)
How about buying Yahoo too then they can be the unholy trinity:
The most despised web search engine, a highly reviled telecommunications company, and a cable company (they're all evil).
EA will be relegated to only the 2nd most evil entity on earth.
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Not actually the cable company. That was already bought by Charter, and it was named Time Warner Cable.
Time Warner, Inc. is the content company that owns Time Magazine, Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, HBO, Turner Broadcasting, etc.
Yes, this is stupidly confusing.
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A great way to sabotage HBO now and streaming though.
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> The most despised web search engine,
I think Bing is despised more, and they provide the back end for Yahoo's shitty search results.
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Re: In the 80's (Score:1)
Re:In the 80's (Score:4, Insightful)
The current AT&T is not the original AT&T. It's the company that bought parts of AT&T and renamed itself AT&T. Also, Comcast and the original AT&T had already merged years ago...
If it was the original AT&T, their service would be more reliable and their network better engineered.
Seriously, Southwestern Bell sucked in all aspects of its service. When it bought PacBell customer service collapsed and general reliability problems started coming up out here in CA. I had the original AT&T Wireless mobile service here in San Diego and I seriously don't ever remember going under 3 bars anywhere, and this was over a decade ago. After SBC sucked up the old AT&T and took on its trade name, it didn't adopt old AT&T's engineering or reliability practices, or even AFAICT its work ethic....
I do sometimes wonder what it's like to work for AT&T Corporation [wikipedia.org] now, which lives on as the long distance subsidiary...
TWAT&T? (Score:5, Funny)
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How about no... (Score:1)
invest in infrastructure (Score:1)
I was going to say 'instead invest in improving their infrastructure.'
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The market expects companies to grow at a certain rate no matter how big the company gets. The problem is that the larger a company gets the harder it is for it to keep growing at the same rate. Apple has been finding this out recently. Even though they are selling lots of phones the stock price isn't reflecting that because the analysts are always expecting Apple to sell more each quarter compared to the year before.
The easiest, and sometimes the only, way for a company to grow at these expected rates i
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We'll be dead by that time. The whole economy is based on the growth is good mantra. Let's build more homes and fill them with more stuff. Make the roads bigger to hold ever more cars because public transport is bad. More channels on your cable or satellite service. More artists on the music streaming service. As long as the net income keeps rising the stock price keeps going up and the investors are happy. As long as GDP keeps going up the economists and politicians are happy. Grow baby grow.
Block It (Score:4, Informative)
The Feds should block this one if it ever comes close to being attempted. We have an absolute dearth of competition as it stands now. I looked at moving from Time Warner for my internet and found AT&T is the only option in my area. TW is okay, but overpriced and I have never heard a good thing about AT&T. Allow the two to combine and I get the worst of both worlds.
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No, they aren't.
Time Warner, Inc. != Time Warner Cable.
And Time Warner Cable was already swallowed by Charter Communications. The NBC Universal / Comcast deal is quite similar to AT&T / Time Warner Inc., actually.
Re:Block It (Score:4, Informative)
Time Warner creates and owns content.
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Oh.... thank you for the correction.
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and dogshit slow Internet service
Assuming you can even connect. I had an 8+ hour network outage a week or two back. (For some reason, whenever I get an outage on Time Warner it hardly ever lasts less than 4 hours straight. For awhile it was happening every 3 or 4 weeks.)
That's right, I didn't even get 2 nines this month. (720 - 8) / 720 ~= 98.9% uptime
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Time Warner is NOT Time Warner Cable (Score:2)
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Warner Bros content
No problem. AT&T just needs to spin off their broadband, cellular and telecom operations. And then they can become a content provider.
I think this was behind the split between Time Warner (Warner Bros) studios and Time Warner cable. some years ago. To avoid antitrust problems. And those reasons should still be valid.
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The Time Warner/Timer Warner Cable split had nothing to do with antitrust problems. Time Warner was primarily a content business, and the capital (and debt) heavy cable business was a bad fit. So they spun it off.
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So they spun it off.
So getting saddled with another capital and debt laden division now is a good idea why? If TWC was a stinker, then it stand to reason the AT&T will be a stinker as well. Unless it turns out that not being affiliated with a carrier is harmful to a content provider's business model. Like our network will carry your content only if your network carries our content. Sounds like mob bosses divvying up territory.
Just reform Bell already (Score:2)
...because some old time execs at AT&T want to party like it's 1982 again!
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Do tell what 'effective monopoly' you think Time Warner has.
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Do tell what 'effective monopoly' you think Time Warner has.
Who else has the rights to Batman and Bugs Bunny?
WTF US Governement? (Score:2)
We don't have enough competition. The FCC has already allowed content distributors to be owned by Media Companies (Comcast/NBC as example). We need MORE internet freedom, not legalized cartels. What we are seeing is CORRUPTION, where the money from corporate interests is more important to regulatory approvals than the needs of the people. It's funny how the "freeest country in the world" is getting more controlled while former regimes like Germany and much of Europe are freeer and have much more competition
Full spectrum of suckage (Score:2)
AT&T sucks on the customer service and billing side. TWC sucks on the signal reliability side. When they merge, they'll cover the full spectrum of suckage. Perhaps that's why TWC is changing its name to "Spectrum".
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That would be so much wittier and insightful if only Time Warner Cable had anything to do with this story.
Common Carrier (Score:2)
OK, allow the purchase to take place. But then apply the FCC's authority over common carriers to the entire entity. Because nobody can be expected to pry apart the (necessarily proprietary) entanglements, cross division subsidies and preferential pricing deals that the separate parts can engage in.
Time Warner, you want a federal regulator crawling around in the studio system (as close to organized crime as this country permits to exist)? Have fun.