Appeals court backs AT&T acquisition of Time Warner

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNN Business

London (CNN Business) An appeals court has rejected the Justice Department's bid to overturn a ruling that cleared the way for AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner.

At a hearing in December, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judges Judith W. Rogers, Robert L. Wilkins and David B. Sentelle grilled the Justice Department's attorneys about their contention that the original decision by Judge Richard Leon was incorrect. Rogers was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, Wilkins by former President Barack Obama, and Sentelle by former President Ronald Reagan.

The Justice Department could decide to ask the full appeals court to hear the case or to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Time Warner has since been renamed WarnerMedia. CNN is part of WarnerMedia.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/media/att-time-warner-merger-ruling/index.html

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Short article.

[ananda]

1. Oh dear.

ATT is bad enough already.

[freemay20]

2. Trying to understand

Wasn't Time Warner already bought by Charter/Spectrum? I was a TW customer and Spectrum/Charter bought TW here.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. That was just the cable provider piece that was spun off and bought by Charter

I.e., Time Warner Cable.

The rest of it (I guess including CNN and the movie studios like Warner Brothers and the publishing entities like Time magazine) are what is being bought by AT&T.

And as a sidenote - I found this article about how NY state wants to rescind that Charter buy of Time Warner cable!

https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/27/new-york-unwinds-charters-time-warner-deal-demands-cable-units-sale/

[freemay20]

4. Thank you for clearing that up for me EOM

[onenote]

7. The publishing entities are not part of the ATT transaction - they were sold separately

Time Inc, the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary that published Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, People, etc etc. was sold by Time Warner Inc. to Meredith Corporation in November 2017. Meredith then began selling off some of those magazines that didn't fit its "lifestyle" magazine focus. For example, it sold Time magazine to Marc Benioff in September 2018 and it sold Fortune to a Thai billionaire in November 2018. Meredith still owns Sports Illustrated and People as well as several other of the former Time Inc. publications.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Thanks for clarification!

So they just broke the whole conglomerate up.

Typical. Combine to be a "one stop media shop" (content and provider) and then break it up again "to go back to a core business".

[onenote]

13. It was broken up over the past 15 years

The history of Time Warner Inc. is one of addition and subtraction over a long period.

The high water marks in its growth came in 1989, when Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications, followed by the acquisition of Turner Broadcasting in 1996 and the merger with AOL in 2000.
Since that time, its mostly been about getting smaller. The first move actually was in 1998, when the company got rid of Six Flags, which it had purchased a few years earlier. In 2004, it shed the Warner Music Group and in 2006 it got rid of the Warner Books Group. The cable subsidiary and AOL were both spun off 10 years ago, and Time Inc. left the fold five years ago, leaving the remnants of Turner (i.e., CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network) and the Warner Movie Studios and the Warner TV production company, which were sold to ATT.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. I did follow all of that (and others)

from back when Ted Turner started buying up "content" to feed his stations- TBS & TNT and notably for TCM (with him having come from a cable-wiring background himself) - basically gaining much (but not all) of the catalog of Warner Bros. films... And then of course there was CNN & CNN Headline News, and CNN International, etc (I remember being on a cruise boat on the Nile back in 1992 watching CNN). But eventually decided to sell.

That period of 1995/96 brought about the complete revamping of the media - new networks like UPN and CW and all kinds of other stuff including the Viacom and CBS merger, Disney buying ABC, etc. Of course the web, that was also an eventual game-changer.

They all had plans to be "all-in-one" media conglomerates - broadcast, cable, film, publishing, and even advertising (like billboards, etc). And as the cycle moved on, they have been breaking it all up again to go back to "core businesses". It's all the bullshit business terminology.

[elleng]

5. Damn

[appalachiablue]

6. Cuz their's not enough market! Giant mergers, M & A, buyouts

keep on going- Bayer and Monsanto, Rite Aide and Walgreens, many more...

[Panich52]

9. And the media conglomeration continues...

[SWBTATTReg]

10. I seem to recall that this came about because rump was moaning about CNN and he wanted to...

derail the merger...am I wrong?

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Yeah I think that is why they suddenly wanted to torpedo the deal

The default GOP position is always to push "monopoly" ("competition" is a meaningless word they like to throw around to distract from what they actually do). But this sudden attempt to scuttle this transaction seemed to become personal and had nothing to do with actually maintaining "competition".

[Bengus81]

11. I have both CNN and Turner classic movies on You Tube TV,watch what happens now........

The classic movies we watch somewhat but CNN we watch daily. This is BULLSHIT and NO I'm not signing on for Direct TV and sticking a damn dish on my roof.

Keep letting these giants buy each other out to where there are just two bringing you all TV content and the Internet. Pretty soon the Internet will be $150--$200 per month. High speed Internet and it's pricing should have been regulated by the mid 2000's.

[BobTheSubgenius]

15. Yeah. Cause thats just what the worldd needs.

More concentration of media ownership.