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Justice Department Tells Time Warner It Must Sell CNN Or DirecTV To Approve Its AT&T Merger (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The Justice Department has called on AT&T and Time Warner to sell Turner Broadcasting, the group of cable channels that includes CNN, as a potential requirement for approving the companies' pending $85.4 billion deal, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday. The other potential way the merger could win approval would be for AT&T to sell its DirecTV division, two of these people added. As originally envisioned, combining AT&T and Time Warner would yield a giant company offering wireless and broadband internet service, DirecTV, the Warner Brothers movie studio and cable channels like HBO and CNN. If the Justice Department formally makes either demand a requisite for approval, AT&T and Time Warner would almost certainly take the matter to court to challenge the government's legal basis for blocking their deal.
Used to be this kind of chicanery was done in the shade, not in the open.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Trump wants to stop that "fake news". The analogy is hardly perfect, but when I think Trumpism Peronism comes to mind, or more specifically that fragment of the Evita Soundtrack.
"What's new, Buenos Aires? Your nation which a few years ago had the second largest gold reserve in the world is now bankrupt. Your country which grew up and grew rich on beef is now rationing it. La Prensa, one of the few newspapers which dare to oppose Peronism has now been silenced and so have all the other reasonable voices. I'll tell you what's new, Buenos Aires...."
Now I happen to think that the merger should be denied period, but the CNN angle I think is complete political bullshit. If this was Fox it would have likely been approved. Sinclair has certainly gobbled a lot of crap up that it shouldn't have been allowed to.
"Justice Department Tells Time Warner It Must Sell CNN Or DirecTV To Approve Its AT&T Merger" makes it sound like TW owns DirecTV. As the second sentence of the summary indicates, AT&T owns DirecTV.
Side note, DTV customer service SUCKS since the AT&T takeover. We made a small change to our service, they screwed it up, then they screwed up the billing for it, and it has taken about 5-10 so far to try to get it fixed, and (as of right now) it's still not fixed. DTV was never perfect, but if there was a problem (and that was rare), it was usually fixed with a call or two. The current problem is not even the first we've had in the couple years since the takeover.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There is much speculation that the Justice Department is doing this because its master, El Presidente is all mad at CNN for "Fake News"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I see how it is, as soon as Trump leaves the country they go and try to do something that is in the best interest of the public.
What you don't need to do is look for anything the actual DOJ might have included in their explanation
Why accept whatever sophistry the DOJ came up at face value? For whom is the DOJ still an impartial agent? When (D)s have it they hound scofflaws in Idaho cabins and Texas religious compounds and ignore border security. When the (R)s have it they go after immigrants. It's a political football and nothing they assert is free of political consideration.
It is amusing that in this case the quintessential "corporate media" entity CNN is on the docket. The people that have bitched and moaned about corporate hegemony over US media are suddenly all outraged on behalf of Time Warner's mouthpiece because Trump and stuff.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Trump has had the stance since day one that the merger wouldn't happen under his administration, so this is expected.
In addition, we need to break these folks up, not let them keep consolidating into ever larger " too big to fail " entities. We have a monopoly problem already, don't need to throw more fuel on the fire.
One giant company shouldn't be allowed to own the content, the pipes and the end mechanism to deliver it all.
Too much power consolidated into too few hands makes it all too easy to sway public opinion in any direction you want. Trump is all too aware of this considering how the media has behaved since the election.
Though I suspect if the TW deal happens, it won't be long before AT&T starts prepping to sell off its wireline services.
.....CNN will have to go. Maybe MSNBC will buy them. lololol :)
Time Warner doesn't care about CNN's political positions except as insofar as it would buy future Democrat compliance in other large mergers.
Democrats should be wary of everyone's motivations vis-a-vis "protecting The People".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's time to start putting the universe back in order.
Aren't most or all of Trump's grandkids Jewish? Oh my fucking god, Jews Will Not Replace Us idiots! Wut now???
Cornered on all sides!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Enough with the breaking news. Someone should tell them that it's not breaking news when you've been saying it for three days. Why don't they just put up an animation of Don Lemon shaking his head while a recording says trump-trump-trump-trump-trump. And what's with all the ex-CIA and former generals? Do they need the money that badly?
In broad terms, there is an argument that government should tune the mixture and sizes of corporations within markets so to maximize social efficiency or equity. On the other hand, there is the philosophical objection that individual liberty should take precedence, and that sub-optimal social outcomes must be accepted as a price for granting individuals liberty to make decisions on their own, free of coercion, because individual liberty is inherently preferred. The latter would not be unusual. For example, the liberty to eat refined sugar predominates over the public health benefits of its prohibition.
Regulation of mergers is a moot issue though, because the FTC bureaucrats have no real knowledge what are the consequences for the market of their dictates. It's all hocus-pocus. A larger corporation can benefit consumers by providing economies of scale and eliminating needles competition. Or it can harm consumers by reducing price competition. Which is declared by officials in what case is determined by political affiliations of the regulated and benefits the regulators choose to extort for a favored constituency. Edicts are not based on science, but a combination of inept meddling, political retaliation and extortion. Giving the FTC the power to block and restrict mergers is of no demonstrable benefit and only increases opportunities for corruption. It seems that regulation would be necessary to prevent monopolization before it forms because, historically, there have been some beneficial breakups of monopolies. The AT&T, Standard Oil, and railroad monopoly breackups stand out as convincing examples. But looking into the details, it turns out that those monopolies were created by government regulations to begin with, so that the the net effect of regulation was negative.
If CNN was genuinely opposed to this kind of regulatory meddling on principle, as opposed to acting as mouthpiece for the self-serving financial interests of it's corporate parent, it might have expressed some concern during 30+ years history of increasing intervention. Apparently, regulations apply to everyone else.
If Trump ordered this as hit on CNN (there is no evidence he did) ya, of course that is unjust. But this kind of things has been going for while. While the Obama administration was notorious for playing politics with regulatory policy, CNN never said a thing.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
So... Where is this standard applied to the FCC allowing the Sinclair Broadcasting acquisition of Tribune Media assets? This will essentially create the single largest TV broadcasting conglomerate on the face of the planet (conservative friendly, of course). Such a conglomerate would control multiple news media outlets, in many locations, essentially dominating local news for much of the US...
The Washington Examiner says:
* The suggestion came from AT&T.
* The justice department was against it.
I know it's easy to assume Trump would use the powers of the executive branch to punish his enemies. After all, that's what the Democrats have been doing for years now - and getting caught from time to time. So it's easy to assume the other side would act the same way.
But, so far, The Donald doesn't seem to be stooping so low.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Someone forgot what website they went to. This is slashdot, not 4chan...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
If you actually think Trump has anything to do with this, you're fucking retarded.
Besides, it was Obama who openly wanted to pass laws that explicitly censored right-leaning news sources. Where was your smug faux outrage on that one, dipshit?
Why does that mean staffing changes?
That will be controlled by the BUYER. If CNN is sold to Fox or the Koch brothers there would be staffing changes but certainly there is some left leaning buyer with the necessary deep pockets
Should we go back and force them to sell off NBC Universal? I say yes, especially since AT&T is probably going to say something like, "Hey, you let Comcast do it!"
I can think of some other lame channels TWC should sell off.
Other than political convenience, what is the official reason to require this?
Monopoly of some flavor? Conflict of interest? Fiduciary responsibility?
I'm not sure selling off CNN would hurt them so much. Is that mistaken?
I suspect not influenced by administration, as typically these merger decisions by the justice department have been hands off. The issue is more that this is unexpected. The last similar vertical merger (Comcast and NBC) required a consent agreement to not abuse that merger (exploiting its new content provider to promote its content deliver and vice versa). However Comcast was not really living up to that agreement. So now I seems possible that the justice department figred that a similar agreement for AT&T and Time Warner wasn't going to work.
That said, I'd rather that they just stop the merger outright, then leave the companies to figure out what they need to jettison on their own before they try to merge again.
(also note, this Time Warner is not the same as Time Warner Cable)