AT&T + Discovery = ?????

Now Dallasbased ATampampT is trying to unwind even more very big deals as the onceuponatime Southwestern Bell see below continues to take hubristic leaps only to fall to the ground amp8230 again This time the face plant comes in the aftermath of acquiring in a pretty good fight with former President Trump and his Justice Department Time Warner Media and then DirecTV The idea of course was to marry big infrastructure monthly bills with the same from lots of cable channels along with a very big bet on an enhanced version of HBO HBO Max and box office moviesOopsATampampT moved DirecTV to its UVerse subsidiary to actually run it keeping an ownership share and redirecting some cash UVerse had added streaming ATampampT TV but that stumbled HBO Max costs real investments and catching up with Netflix andor Disney is a big reach with one streamThe dividend coupled with 5G infrastructure costs made it pretty clear what needed to be doneEnter John Malone who once sold TCI to the original ATampampT then the longdistance company for 55B And with Malone David Zaslav and Discovery came alongMakes senseJust BTW did anyone notice Zaslav recently bought a house in Beverly HillsNow ATampampT39s John Stankey Randall Stephenson39s successor is in charge of making sense of it all He39s apparently asking David Zaslav to fix it all with help from John Malone39s Liberty and Advance the Newhouse family vehicleNow that I believe is a damn good bet Assembling a roster of streamers from a long list of traditional networks including USA Cartoon Eurosport and more looks interesting The new list will join two growing streamers with opportunities for more targeted streamers amp8230 it just makes senseRandom NotesReally amp8230 Southwestern Bell was once like Verizon one of the regional Bell systems which grew out of the breakup of the original American Telephone ampamp Telegraph Company After SWBell started to grow by overbuilding cable with UVerse it bought the ATampampT naming rights and grew by adding Bell South and more amp8230 like Direct TV which it unloaded not long ago reversing retired chairman Randall Stephenson39s acquisition expeditionsFrom FactSet midMay 2021 some market values Disney315billion Comcast269B Has anyone noticed Comcast can actually successfully run both an infrastructure and a media company No matter the kneejerk stock 5 hit last Monday ATampampT230B Netflix218B ViacomCBS25B Discovery16B AMC Networks2BAww amp8230 Leslie Moonves will not get his 120000000 from CBS after allWatch ATampampT doubledown on broadband amp8230 fiber and 5GOn a followup to my last posting about media groups and backing prodemocracy positions amp8230 all pablum only got through to a couple of groups not really worth commenting Meanwhile the quotconquotdemocracy noise continues at high volume Though the sortofofficial Republican position seems to be democracy bad but can39t talk about it Only sign of good news was one evangelical39s observation that Trump might not be physically able to runClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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AT&T + Discovery = ?????

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Paul S. Maxwell

"About That with Carl Mayer": Involved Media Connected Audience Fall 2024 Report (Episode 5) - By Carl Mayer

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