Time Warner Cable and AT&T Deal

In case you are not really a huge media junkie, it may be difficult for you to care about things such as the 80 billion dollars deal between the mass media corporations AT&T and Time Warner. However you should. You certainly should.

Time Warner has a great deal of TV shows, movies and sports to offer, that many of us enjoy watching. Love Game of Thrones? Well Time Warner Cable deals owns HBO. Like to watch basketball i.e. NBA? Times Warner cable services has that on TNT. Fancy DC Comics movies? Times Warner owns Warner Bros. movies.

AT&T, however, usually operates wireless, phone as well as cable TV networks reaching a large number of people in America.
Both of these organizations happen to be gigantic independently. Collectively, AT&T along with Time Warner deals would definitely build probably one of the most powerful mass media service providers on earth, creating a significant influence on the entire industry as well as what eventually ends up being provided to customers.

Plus there is a whole lot more at risk than these 2 leading U.S. enterprises. AT&T really wants to acquire Time Warner Cable services so it could gear up for that brave new era that all of us are proceeding towards. Whether or not we are (and more importantly if the government is) OK with this specific contract, it is going to be a pretty important decision in how this globe is shaped.

The Big Picture

Media and distribution businesses simply continue to get bigger, and then acquiring one another to become even bigger.
This particular is not a dangerous thing on its face. However years of consolidation throughout the nation have led to a fairly small number of large businesses that do not necessarily need to compete as much when there is a fair group of smaller organizations.

There is presently a speculation that the AT&T/Time Warner deal might push other businesses to also merge to ensure that this particularly new mega-corporation cannot push them all around as easily.

What would happen to the future of the U.S. media industry?

Regulations are the mundane, but really essential component of the AT&T and Time Warner equation.

The Federal Government Communication Commission can take a long, critical look at this deal to find out if it is going to hurt customers. Should they decide it will, the FCC can either stop the deal or call for AT&T/Time Warner Cable services to create significant caveats such as having to comply with net neutrality principles even when the current legislation is discarded.

AT&T has already missed out on a major amalgamation caused by FCC intervention. The corporation in the year 2011 tried to acquire T-Mobile. AT&T encountered a serious struggle since it was trying to buy quite a similar company, and the offer would've made AT&T and T-Mobile an industry giant.

This AT&T/Time Warner Cable move doesn't seem to have that issue. Acquiring content would definitely move AT&T towards a completely different business, just like it did for Comcast when it acquired NBC Universal. That offer was accepted, however, not without a great deal of criticism that continues still to this day.