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AT&T Buys Time Warner For $85B. Is The Mass Media Consolidating? (reuters.com)
Though regulators may not agree, "Time Warner and AT&T reps claim this is necessary just to compete," warns Mr D from 63. Reuters reports: The tie-up of AT&T Inc and Time Warner Inc, bringing together one of the country's largest wireless and pay TV providers and cable networks like HBO, CNN and TBS, could kick off a new round of industry consolidation amid massive changes in how people watch TV... Media content companies are having an increasingly difficult time as standalone entities, creating an opportunity for telecom, satellite and cable providers to make acquisitions, analysts say. Media firms face pressure to access distribution as more younger viewers cut their cable cords and watch their favorite shows on mobile devices. Distribution companies, meanwhile, see acquiring content as a way to diversify revenue.
The deal reflects "big changes in consumption of video particularly among millennials," according to one former FCC commissioner, and the article also reports that the deal "will face serious opposition." Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey warned "we need more competition, not more consolidation... Less competition has historically resulted in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers..." And in a Saturday speech, Donald Trump called it " an example of the power structure I'm fighting...too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
The deal reflects "big changes in consumption of video particularly among millennials," according to one former FCC commissioner, and the article also reports that the deal "will face serious opposition." Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey warned "we need more competition, not more consolidation... Less competition has historically resulted in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers..." And in a Saturday speech, Donald Trump called it " an example of the power structure I'm fighting...too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
This is a good move by AT&Fee - makes it easier to bribe the correct political elite to keep smaller companies from competing.
Easier than providing better service if people have less options.
I loved the dinner the other night where Trump and Clinton roasted each other. I thought the best line was the one where he said he enjoyed meeting the leaders of her campaign team Then he began pointing out the heads of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and the New York Times. Even the people that hated him laughed loudly.
That's great that you can watch DirecTV on your phone without data charges. However, this is also the reason why Antitrust laws exist. It means someone on T-Mobile and DirectV doesn't have this option and has to pay extra. This does not promote competition, nor is it beneficial for net neutrality. If this merger happens you will probably be able to watch HBO too at a discount. This merger is exactly what antitrust laws are meant to curtail. It may be convenient for the consumer in some ways, but it is anti competitive. "These Acts, first, restrict the formation of cartels and prohibit other collusive practices regarded as being in restraint of trade. Second, they restrict the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that could substantially lessen competition. Third, they prohibit the creation of a monopoly and the abuse of monopoly power."
Humor works best when there is truth behind it.
What a dumb question. The mass media have been consolidating for DECADES.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
One of many issues to solve corruption in the country is to de-monopolize the media. When they started letting moguls buy out huge chunks of media about 30 years ago we were warned that this would happen. Now you have actors and actresses repeating talking points and the AP is the single source of most "news". Investigative journalism has become a dangerous vigilante action instead of "Press" as it was defined and discussed at the time of the founding of the USA.
Lots of problems to work on in this country, and the abuse of monopoly is one.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
In 10 years : WalmartGoogleExxonAppleGoldman buys AT&TimeWarnerGeneralElectricsVerizon for $85T
Thank to all the media blunders, Trump is more powerful now than he ever was as a simple business man.
The media made candidate Trump to f*ck with the Republican primary. Then the media destroys Trump in October to ensure Hillary wins. Much of the stuff they are using to destroy him has been around for a long time, the media could have made it public during the early days of the Republican primary but then Hillary might have had a viable opponent.
Media isn't consolidating - it's monopolizing. First they grow to a few big corporations then they specialize in a certain field of media and customers will have no choice.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The pivoted-to-paranoia Trump is quick to forget that it was the media who made him a thing to begin with. Now that it's obvious that he can't compete he's adding them to his list of everyone else that he wants to blame for his shortcomings.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
AT&T to Comcast: "We'll carry NBC content if you carry Time Warner content."
AT&T and Comcast to Netflix: "I guess you are just fucked, buddy."
Have gnu, will travel.
Paranoia? He straight up called out all the 1% types there who had turned on him because they only care about team colors, not any sort of values at all.
Hillary's team does hate Catholics, making it doubly ironic for her to be at a Catholic charity event. You can read all about it in the Podesta emails. At least, assuming you don't believe the CNN lie that only the media is allowed to look.
No the last 100 years were a fluke brought on by Two World Wars and a Great Depression which blew away all the wealth of the world and reset the system to a near 0 state. All the businesses and investments in Europe and Asia were toast. Australia was still an early society which hadn't matured/developed into a class structure system. The United States had been crippled by the Great Depression which wiped out most of the Elite's wealth leaving only a few wealthy people. The resulting economic boom from rebuilding from a 0 state was always going to be temporary without strong government intervention/market protections and the US completely dropped the ball on that. Most Western countries have completely lost the plot with wealth inequality and it's back to business as usual.
Here you go
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/12/wikileaks-emails-show-clinton-spokeswoman-joking-about-catholics-and-evangelicals/?0p19G=c
The interesting thing in the American Colonies is that it was mostly wealthy land holders that rebelled. Those guys that signed the Declaration of Independence actually had a lot to lose besides their heads.
because of tech. Airplanes and Machine Guns and Bombs and such. A good chuck of the reasons for the Great Depression were tech, especially when you strip away the esoteric monetary policy explanations.
Root cause is still tech changes happening too fast for society to adjust. Least as far as I can tell.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You're begging a lot of questions here. The biggest is assuming that wealth inequality is an important metric. I think wealth inequality became a popular metric in the first place because it is something that can always be said to be a problem and thus is an evergreen measure of inequality.
Notice also that there is no desirable level of wealth inequality. Isn't it kind of odd to have a control system without a set point?
Finally, why do you think wealth inequality is out of control? The US has been suffering from heavy labor competition with parts of the world that are a large factor cheaper. Rich people should be massively more successful at accumulating wealth in such an environment than people whose wealth is solely labor-derived. It's surprising that wealth inequality has shifted so little which indicates to me that you're just missing outright the successful control of wealth inequality.
AT&T is really SBC + BellSouth + (SBC + BellSouth == Cingular) + PacTel + (Michigan Bell + Indiana Bell + Illinois Bell + Ohio Bell + Wisconsin Bell == Ameritech) + ATT.
Isn't it great we take our anti-trust and monopoly laws so seriously?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
So, two Catholics joking about Catholics. aka most of Catholic literature and media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I don't see how his statement requires one to assume wealth inequality (WI) is an important metric. He's just saying one consequence of WI is what we're seeing.
And the consequences of aren't important? Let us recall he claimed a pretty big thing:
When you let the rich have all the money they've got very little left to spend it on besides conquest.
He also claimed that things were different for the last century due to a "rapid onset of technology".
What's so odd about it? If something is seen as bad, there is no such thing as a "desirable" level it. Do you have a "desirable" level of turd in your sandwich?
Everyone who eats sandwiches implicitly has a desirable level of turd in their sandwich. Small enough that they never know it's there by taste, smell, illness, etc.
But wealth inequality doesn't even come close to the disagreeability of the turd-free sandwich. Virtually everyone agrees that someone who tries should have better ability to accumulate wealth than someone who doesn't try. That leads to an inequality which near universally agreed upon. The connotation of wealth "inequality" deceptively implies that the ideal of wealth "equality" is better, but few actually buy into that unlike the ideal of the turd-free sandwich.
Actually, rich people would be LESS successful under such conditions. All those poor people can't afford to buy the luxury stuff that richer people would buy, limiting what new businesses the rich people can create, which means less new jobs for poor people, which creates a downward spiral.
Utter fantasy. We only need to look at the developed world to see that you aren't even remotely accurate. Rich people got richer because capital, the primary sort of wealth of rich people, continues to climb relative to the wealth gathering value of labor. It'd be nice, for example, if my wages had tracked the NASDAQ Composition, for example. My minimum wage of $3.65 per hour in 1987 would be roughly $50 per hour today.
You're also using a particularly erroneous version of the demand-driven model of the economy. Somehow it's really important that developed world people have a weak inflation-adjusted increase in their wages, but not important that the far more numerous developing world workers have massive increases after inflation in their wages.
But even if we ignore that, demand is not just driven by consumers. It's also driven by employers who always get short shrift with this particular model. I consider that a major error of the model just on its own.
If left alone, this would eventually decreased wealth inequality (e.g weaker businesses close down, the rich become not so rich anymore). So the fact that it has shifted so little is a sign that the elites are propping up the system, preventing the market from correcting itself.
And it has in the developing world. But it hasn't in the developed world. The excuses are numerous, but I think I nailed it with global labor competition.