The reality here is that the President is blocking this deal because of his issues with CNN (To those that think this is not being driven by the Whitehouse...I have this bridge I am trying to sell....). This is purely political and I am sure the President’s statements will be front and centre in the court battle.
Never though I would be on the side of AT&T or a cable company.
> Never though I would be on the side of AT&T or a cable company.
You can oppose the AT&T merger and also call bullshit on the whitehouse if that does turn out to be the motivator here. They aren't mutually exclusive.
I find it shady if that's the only reason for this happening. But mostly just shady because it hasn't taken place in previous deals where it should have.
However... That doesn't mean I'm any less against the AT&T merger.
The DOJ is asking for either DirecTV or Turner Broadcasting be excluded from the deal, because being under the same roof would be a huge boost to DirectTV over its competitors - cable companies and Dish Network.
Turner Broadcasting includes several channels. Both TNT and TBS are probably more important to the deal than CNN (the former has higher ratings than CNN across the board; the latter does in primetime); the idea that it's the sole focus for DOJ is highly questionable.
Furthermore, how does DOJ's actual demand hurt CNN? AT&T could spin out Time Warner and keep the Turner channels. Or even if Time Warner spun out the Turner channels, they wouldn't go away (they were independent of Time Warner in the 1990s).
I'm as anti-Trump as the next guy, but the idea that there's not a rational basis for DOJ's demand is simply mistaken.
The DOJ approved the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal in 2011 without requiring any major divestitures. It was a similar vertical merger involving a cable company and a content producer. It hasn't resulted in NBC Universal content being restricted to Comcast or large increases in carriage fees charged to competitors which are the major potential issues the DOJ raises. I think the DOJ is going to have a tough row to hoe in court.
The reason AT&T is purchasing Time Warner is to gain their content production capability. You don't see how forcing the sale of a major part of that would affect AT&T's reasons for even doing the merger?
The issue with forcing the spin off of Turner isn't the believe that Turner including CNN would somehow no longer exist. It is the believe that it is being to done for political purposes to allow a journalistic outlet critical of the administration to be purchased by an organization friendly to it.
This along with the FCC media ownership changes are despot 101, gain control of the media.
I think it makes plenty of sense to criticize the consistency of the DOJ.
What I'm saying is that "Trump doesn't like CNN" is a silly explanation for DOJ wanting either AT&T to spin off DTV or for Time Warner to spin off Turner Broadcasting.
Maybe the latter scenario somehow influences CNN's coverage, but it's an extremely tenuous link.
The last thing this country needs is more media consolidations... Trump snuck in to office partially because of past conservative-leaning mergers and acquisitions
Massive mergers like this should never even get off the ground. They do because Wall Street makes a ton-o-money doing them. How would this merger increase competition and lower consumer prices ?
Their argument is that the base internet access package will be cheaper than now... Neglecting to mention everyone will pay more for the "deluxe" package that gives them access to what they have today.
> The reality here is that the President is blocking this deal because of his issues with CNN ( (To those that think this is not being driven by the Whitehouse...I have this bridge I am trying to sell....).
Alright, give us your best pitch.
How do you see this happening, Trump calls DOJ and tells them to block AT&T merger because of CNN?
A lot of messaging in politics is unspoken and unrecorded to avoid culpability. You do things that favor someone higher up without being asked to (or based on available public signals), and get rewarded without having ever asked for it.
Yup, many things are done that way in politics. But lately it seems it's also pretty hard to keep things from leaking, someone there would probably let it slip to the media that "Trump wanted CNN gone". So far it's "Some Democrats have expressed concern" that's the only source.
Any is it all of the sudden these people started loving monopolies. "Well DOJ wants to something about, we clearly have to oppose it and support exactly the opposite".
The same thing happened with the TPP. Every Bernie supporter was against TPP. As soon as the White House pulled out of the TPP, I saw messages on /r/politics about "Well, we can't support it now once that Trump did it", it wasn't even ironic.
Never though I would be on the side of AT&T or a cable company.