AT&T and Time Warner Inc. have recently met “to discuss various business strategies including a possible merger,” Bloomberg reported yesterday.
Time Warner’s main operating divisions are Home Box Office, Turner, and Warner Bros. Entertainment, with brands such as HBO, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, CNN, HLN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and truTv. Time Warner also operates websites including PGA.com, NBA.com, NCAA.com, DCComics.com, DCNation.com, and TMZ.com, and has a 10 percent stake in Hulu.
An AT&T purchase of Time Warner would be strategically similar to Comcast’s 2010 acquisition of NBCUniversal, giving a large stable of programming to one of the nation’s biggest Internet and TV service providers. US regulators would likely examine the competitive impacts of AT&T owning Time Warner or similar companies. AT&T would have incentive to raise the prices its rivals (such as Comcast, Charter, and Verizon) pay to distribute Time Warner programming on their cable TV systems, which could indirectly raise consumers’ TV bills. (http://arstechnica.com/)
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