AT&T Reaches Out to Time Warner

Mussaffa Jawed, Publicity Editor|October 25, 2016

AT%26T+Reaches+Out+to+Time+Warner

The Journal also AT&T has reached a deal to buy Time Warner for more than $85 billion in what would become a corporate merger. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, October 22nd, 2016 .

The merger could see AT&T gain ownership over a of household names. Time Warner — not to be confused with Time Warner Cable, which sold itself to Charter Communications earlier this year — owns HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. movie studio, the D.C. Comics brand, a highly profitable video game studio, among many other properties, added The Journal.

Reported that the boards of the two companies were meeting Saturday, and a deal could be announced as soon as Saturday evening. According to (latimes.com)
It follows a wave of deal making and consolidation that could radically transform viewers’ leisure time and media spending, including Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal, Google’s push into live-TV streaming, and the original-programming investments of Amazon and Netflix, stated abcnews.com

¨ The potential merger highlights one of the most definitive trends of the modern media business: the push from tech and telecommunications giants to control the lucrative, popular content they once passively supplied,” according to npr.com.

For Time Warner, the deal represents a victory for owner Mr. Charter Bewkes, 64, who took some heat from investors for rebuffing a takeover bid two years ago from 21st Century Fox at $85 a share. 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp share common ownership, stated Wallstreetjournal.com.

“The Federal Communications Commission has already adopted net neutrality rules that would bar AT&T from favoring its own content over any other provider’s online. The commission is also poised to adopt rules that would end cable and satellite TV operators’ effective monopoly over the set-top boxes customers use to receive their programming, which should help independent and online-only content providers compete against the CNNs of the world.” According to the latimes.com