AT&T Eats a $15.5 Billion Impairment Charge As DirecTV Debacle Continues (arstechnica.com) 44
An anonymous reader writes: AT&T lost 617,000 customers from DirecTV and its other TV businesses in the final quarter of 2020, capping a year in which it lost nearly 3 million customers in the category, AT&T reported today. AT&T today also informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has taken "noncash impairment charges of $15.5 billion" related to its ongoing DirecTV debacle. AT&T said the $15.5 billion charges reflect "changes in our management strategy and our evaluation of the domestic video business... including our decision to operate our video business separately from our broadband and legacy telephony operations." This operational decision "required us to identify a separate Video reporting unit and to assess both the recoverability of its long-lived assets and any assigned goodwill for impairment," AT&T said.
AT&T said it also logged "charges of approximately $780 million from the impairment of production and other content inventory at WarnerMedia, with $520 million resulting from the continued shutdown of theaters during the pandemic and the hybrid distribution model for our 2021 film slate." The charges were added to AT&T's Q4 expenses. As a result, AT&T reported a $13.9 billion net loss in the quarter, compared to a net profit of $2.4 billion a year ago. Q4 revenue was $45.7 billion, down from $46.8 billion year over year. The Q4 net loss swung AT&T to a full-year net loss of $5.4 billion.
AT&T said it also logged "charges of approximately $780 million from the impairment of production and other content inventory at WarnerMedia, with $520 million resulting from the continued shutdown of theaters during the pandemic and the hybrid distribution model for our 2021 film slate." The charges were added to AT&T's Q4 expenses. As a result, AT&T reported a $13.9 billion net loss in the quarter, compared to a net profit of $2.4 billion a year ago. Q4 revenue was $45.7 billion, down from $46.8 billion year over year. The Q4 net loss swung AT&T to a full-year net loss of $5.4 billion.
Seems a giant is falling (Score:5, Funny)
Because it lost connection to reality. Not the first time.
Of course, the irony of a company whose primary business is creating connections losing said connection to reality is pretty nice.
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You go on ahead, I'll catch up.
Take your time. And don't come back here until you're done.
Spamming cunt.
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I think ATT lost connection to reality decades ago. They were so intimately a part of US technology at the start, that they were able to cruise along on momentum for a very long time.
It would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall on some of those decisions, for instance, selling off cable modem to Comcast. You could almost see some old guy saying
"but, phone wires."
"Our phone infrastructure is over an hundred years old, sir, and technology has passed it by. We need a new infrastructure if w
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I think ATT lost connection to reality decades ago. They were so intimately a part of US technology at the start, that they were able to cruise along on momentum for a very long time.
Probably. Giants die slowly.
Seeing as we let them buy up all the Bells (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was actually one of the baby Bells, SBC (Southwestern Bell Corporation) which bought AT&T [wikipedia.org], then changed their name to AT&T. Verizon is the other large surviving baby Bell. Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) is the other one.
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A turd by any other name...
Re:Seeing as we let them buy up all the Bells (Score:5, Informative)
Um , you have that exactly backwards.
SW Bell out of Texas bought up Pac Tel on the west coast then Ameritech in the Great Lakes region. This conglomeration of Baby Bells bought up the rump AT&T operation and took their mother's name. Finally they bought up BellSouth in the southeast US, and Cingular Wireless, which had been a joint deal between Bellsouth & the others was rebranded as AT&T Wireless.
FWIW, the two northeastern RBOCS (Nynex & Bell Atlantic) merged and picked up the remnants of MCI-Worldcom to become Verizon, and US West aka Mountain Bell went from Qwest during the dot-com era to CenturyLink. So seven Baby Bells became three and absorbed the major landline carriers in the process.
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In many areas that's absolutely true, but in more and more areas that's starting to break down. ATT still leans heaviliy on their 100+ year old copper infrastructure, and it's really not working.
criminal (Score:3)
If one of the little people relieved the investing public of that much money, they'd go to prison for the rest of their lives. Seems like there is no accountability at AT&T.
Re: criminal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Only if you used the money in a way that is inconsistent with what you said you'd use it for. If you ask people for 15B and tell them that you intend to spend it developing and marketing cheesy-poof flavored lip balm, and it's a flop, that's on them, not you.
AT&T has taken billions of taxpayer money to bring internet access to the last mile, but many ATT subscribers can't even get their garbage low-availability max-at-5Mbps ADSL. Seems like ATT is immune to responsibility.
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Only if you used the money in a way that is inconsistent with what you said you'd use it for. If you ask people for 15B and tell them that you intend to spend it developing and marketing cheesy-poof flavored lip balm, and it's a flop, that's on them, not you.
AT&T has taken billions of taxpayer money to bring internet access to the last mile, but many ATT subscribers can't even get their garbage low-availability max-at-5Mbps ADSL. Seems like ATT is immune to responsibility.
Right, and the reason is, their strategy has always been to leverage the current copper phone line infrastructure. They appear to have no interest whatsoever in building out a modern infrastructure.
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Yeah, no accountability, other than the whole $15 billion thing, I guess.
A bad decision isn't illegal. 20 million subscribe (Score:3)
When AT&T bought DirectTV, they bought the largest TV provider in the country, with 20 million subscribers.
Their plan was that they could offer those 20 million subscribers the same service plus portability (you can watch on your phone or whatever) and make investors a lot of money. The would by switching the underlying transport to streaming rather satellite, because satellite is very expensive to operate.
That would have made a lot of money for investors. The streaming service would cost the company a
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> There's this little company called Comcast that you may not be aware of.
I was blissfully unaware of Comcast's existence, and now you've ruined it.
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Note the first part of the sentence, "When AT&T bought DirectTV".
Comcast had about 20 million at it's peak, around early 2020, I think.
For a few years, Comcast was adding 850,000 - 1.1 million per year. Which means that "when AT&T bought DirectTV", Comcast would have had something like 16-17 million subscribers. That's about 4 million less than DirectTV "when AT&T bought DirectTV".
Dumb question (Score:3)
Re:Dumb question (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dumb question (Score:4, Interesting)
An the damn lying on the price. I signed up for the $60 a month package when I had no choice but have satellite. My bill was never less than $100 a month after they added in taxes and fees and other bullshit
I dumped them as soon as I got decent internet, and signed up with Sling. Price was quoted at $35 a month, and after taxes $37 a month.
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The Slashdot blurb indicated that it was "impairment of production."
I think the problem with the economics of the content business is that unlike the studio system, modern production are their own individual investment and P&L. Everyone involved gets paid a lot up front, so a lot of capital is extracted from an individual production. The amount remaining for investing into future productions is small, and if you lose some big theatrical box office or something, it hinders your ability to make new cont
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They've loaded all the debt they incurred buying DTV onto that unit, and have said they won't do anything to replace the existing birds as they fall out of orbit. Meanwhile they've more than doubled the monthly charges to try recouping their "investment", which is a great plan in the middle of a pandemic with rising unemployment and easy availability of N streaming alternatives at much lower price.
For my part, I'd signed up with them about 7-8 years back as a cheaper alternative to Comcast, but dumped them
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In a global pandemic, when billions of people are staying home and streaming any & all available content, how can a streaming and media content company do so poorly?
Great question. Because, they're doing a really, really bad job at it.
I've got 100M fiber to the house. I could get Gig but I don't think I need it except for bragging rights, and 100M saves me a few bucks. My mom, who is trying to run a business with internet components, is stuck with DSL because ATT is the only game in her area, and DSL is all ATT offers. She found out recently (with my help) that the network slowdowns that were crippling her business were caused by her daughter watching TV in the oth
Maybe the Reddit folks can pump up AT&T (Score:2)
...and I thought satellite tv was on the rise. Wait, that was 20 years ago
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I paid $2.75/month for email (unlimited accounts) plus whatever it costs these days to register a domain name*. I'm not at all sympathetic to whiny bitches that want something for free.
Ethereum is vaporware.
No, it's not a "ware". It's a currency. It's like a wooden nickel. It's only worth something as long as the few people who made it and the few people who use it thinks its worth money. It's a highly unstable and unreliable currency. It is not an investment, it's gambling at best and ponzi scheme at worst.
I asked a series of questions on a GitHub project's "issues" section
I manage a set of ver
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I bet there are quite a few lurkers out there who will agree wholeheartedly with the following:
You would lose that bet.
AT&T sucks! (Score:1)
It couldn't have happened to a nicer asshole. They are the Wells Fargo of telecoms.
-1 Too True
AT&T and DirecTV merger bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone remember when AT&T and DirecTV merging was considered bad?
Pepperidge Farms remembers: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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This should be modded up (no points). But I remember and thought "Is AT&T really that stupid ?"
Note, this AT&T is not the real AT&T, one of the baby bells (based in Texas I think) renamed themselves to AT&T a few years ago.
Stop treating your customers like shit (Score:2)
Well, I'm bailing (Score:2)
and will not be a subscriber this time next month.
My wife and I agree, we aren't bothering to total up the unique channels, make the complaint that many are literal duplicates, since they are all zero value shopping/infomercial spews, and will move on to other services.
Among my other complaints, inability to play NFL Sunday Ticket on alternative devices, stupid sports blackouts (yep, no one else solves this, so no one else gets my business), seemingly random inability to view on other devices, a feature the
We need to seporate infrastructure from content. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem I see, is how many of these companies are infrastructure and content all bundled into one nice neat package.
I may want Fiber, or Cable at my house. But I may not want Comcast, Spectrum, or Verizon to give me the content. I want a company who is focuses and I pay with a separate bill for just the infrastructure, than I can buy my ISP and/or Television service from who ever I want. You know it may be more expensive than just having a nice bundle package, but I get more freedom on who to use, and if a company is pissing me off, I can switch to someone else.
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This is precisely it.
I don't buy bath soap, shower curtains, towels, or toothbrushes from my local water utility. I don't purchase my refrigerator, oven, or microwave from my electric company. And I don't want films or music or anything else from my ISP.
Content production and content delivery should be forcibly separated across a wide regulatory gulf.