Time Warner Cable is not part of Time Warner, so they're not consolidating service providers. AT&T just wants some content production companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Time_W...

It seems like sports is the last frontier that's keeping traditional linear TV alive. Nobody wants to stream the game tomorrow; the outcome is already known which makes it unexciting to watch. Time Warner has plenty of exclusive sports deals, which gives AT&T leverage over their competition that also has exclusive sports deals (Comcast is the big one). If anything, this creates some incentive for cross-licensing that didn't exist before, which could in theory be good for end users. (I'll believe it when I see it, though.)

Alternatively, traditional TV still has a lot of money behind it, so it makes sense to keep it alive for as long as possible. If you couldn't buy HBO Now and you like HBO shows, your "only" choice is to buy all the channels you don't watch in order to be able to watch HBO. That would be good for both the cable company, and those other channels nobody wants. If a cable company controls HBO again, I think we can see where this is all headed.

Personally, I don't think AT&T can really afford this acquisition, so it might be the beginning of the end for them. If I were AT&T I would spin off everything that wasn't my spectrum licenses, and have a handful of employees raking in pure profit without having to deal with the pesky business of building infrastructure, producing television, billing customers, etc. Kind of like all the companies that own airplanes and lease them to the airlines, or I suppose DeBeers and diamond mines.

Sports is keeping traditional TV alive somewhat, but there are ways to stream sports online without a traditional cable / sat subscription, such as Sling.TV

Well, to stream some sports online.

Sling.TV has problems with licensing agreements where they can't show certain "in market" games, for instance. (There's other, subtler licensing problems too.)

The way that sports got split between the major networks and exclusivity agreements means that their cabal is essentially impossible to entirely replace via a streaming service for any kind of reasonable price even though I can sometimes get the product for free over the air.

Media licensing is a shitshow. Honestly, at this point, I'm for extending the situations under which a compulsory license is granted, setting up a fixed fee, and just letting people have at it.

We need a new model. Copyright as currently implemented is non-functional.

Copyright is totally functional. What you are really saying is you want cheaper sports and the people who don't give you what you want are dicks. It's a mistake a lot of people make.

> Copyright is totally functional.

As just one instance of the copyright system breaking down, the DMCA has seriously stifled artists and led to massive censorship of controversial or critical material by vested interests and malicious actors. There are hundreds or thousands of articles on DMCA notices being used as restraint on legal speech or by people stealing the capitalization of content rather than copyright enforcement mechanism.

"Totally functional."

> Nobody wants to stream the game tomorrow; the outcome is already known which makes it unexciting to watch.

Startup idea: neural-network-based filter for social media applications to hide any discussion of the results of a particular game until after you watch it. Bonus if it can also hide movie spoilers.

> Startup idea: neural-network-based filter for social media applications to hide any discussion of the results of a particular game until after you watch it. Bonus if it can also hide movie spoilers.

Fuck no. Last thing you want is nation-states hacking that and delivering censorship straight to your mind or "Funny how this ballot has one candidate only".

People could even intentionally inflict this on themselves, such as "blocking" a person after a bad breakup so you can't see them or hear their names when they come up in conversation - I hear there might be a Black Mirror episode that touches on this (I'm yet to watch any of them).

Edit: Apologies for my off-topic rant: I read "neural-network-based filter" as "neural filter". I'll leave my comment as a monument to my derpery.

It's not just the spoilers, but the fact that you know the game is over that ruins the fun for a lot of people.

Agreed; I've experienced that as well.

I ended up introspecting on the reasons for that, realized that every single one of them applied equally well to watching it live, and as a result stopped watching entirely.

"Nobody wants to stream the game tomorrow" This assumes the sports you like and teams you watch are in your country. This may often (usually?) be true but sometimes isn't. Some sports make it impossible to watch live - F1 racing changes countries for each race for example. Who wants to get up at 3am when they have work the next day. I'd watch more sport if streaming was possible.

But you wouldn't switch cable companies or buy content you don't want to watch.

There is no technical reason preventing anyone from streaming/recording sporting events. It's easy.

Unless you don't have cable - which I don't. If people didn't buy content they don't want it would drastically change things in terms of how much money sports content was worth. It would be an interesting scenario to see play out.

At least in my market, you get TV for free with the Internet, or rather, you can't buy Internet access unless you also pay for TV.

And don't say there's no competition, because I could totally in theory get 3Mbps DSL for the same price as 300Mbps cable.

>don't say there's no competition, because I could ...get 3Mbps DSL for the same price as 300Mbps cable.

1/10th the speed is proof of competition? Poe's Law strikes again!

That's 1/100th, and the word "totally" in my comment indicates sarcasm.

You don't get tv with internet in my region and I also can't get fibre. Slow DSL is all I can get.

F1 is timed for British viewers. I used to watch the events live over the web. No commercials and no delays. They almost invariably started at 5am on Saturday (Pacific time) for practice. I would post things on Twitter in #F1 before US viewers even saw the video due to network video delay of about 7 seconds. ;)

> Time Warner Cable is not part of Time Warner, so they're not consolidating service providers. AT&T just wants some content production companies.

That might be what they say, but I think it's to compete with Google. While Google may have given up on further fiber rollout after the existing ones, Google still plans to continue to expand and compete with AT&T and other broadband providers but as a wireless provider. Google Fi is just the start. When they bought up Motorola they ended making a better phone themselves (the Pixel). They're using Sprint and T-Mobile for Google Fi now, but plan to become a better wireless data provider.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether these plans will work.

>That might be what they say, but I think it's to compete with Google.

That's not how ownership works. It's not "what they say". Either they own the company or they don't...

Yeah isn't Time Warner Cable now merged with Charter to form what's now referred to simply as Spectrum?

Read my response- I wasn't disputing ownership, nor was I disputing the Time Warner.

I should have only quoted "AT&T just wants some content production companies" because the rest seems to have confused you. I wasn't disputing ownership.

Please explain to me how competing with Google's broadband operation fits into all of this, then.

I think what they were trying to say is that AT&T is buying up Time Warner Cable/Spectrum to own more of the broadband and cellular service markets, such that they can better compete with Google, now offering broadband and Google Fi data service over Sprint and T-Mobile's cellular networks.

AT&T already has a wireline ISP, U-Verse.

Google does not produce any TV channels, as far as I know.

AT&T is buying Time Warner because Comcast bought NBC/Universal. I'm pretty sure it's as simple as that.

AT&T is NOT buying Time Warner Cable/Spectrum.

I'm not so sure about what our future interactions with Google or AT&T will look like, but I do know Taco Bell will win the forthcoming franchise wars...

> What is going on with our regulators?

AT&T has reached an agreement to buy TWC. The deal has been neither reviewed nor approved by regulators (yet).

Time Warner Cable [1] used to be a part of Time Warner Inc., but:

> In the past, other major divisions of Time Warner included Time Inc., AOL, Time Warner Cable, Warner Books, and Warner Music Group. All of these operations were either sold to other investors or spun off as independent companies between 2004 and 2014.

AT&T made a deal to buy Time Warner Inc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner

One could look at it another way... the fact that they think that this could even be possible and are willing to go through the motions to reach the agreement speaks volumes about what these giant companies think of the "regulators".

It's not that simple. Announcing a merger doesn't necessarily a high chance of success. A recent, relevant example is Comcast's 2014-2015 merger with TWC that was called off after regulator push-back.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/04/28/com...

Or the AT&T merger with T-Mobile... that not only didn't go through it resulted in a massive contract clause with a $1B payout for T-Mobile...

Time Warner Cable is not involved. AT&T is buying Time Warner (the content company) and not TWC.

> AT&T has reached an agreement to buy TWC. The deal has been neither reviewed nor approved by regulators (yet).

Then let me ask something else.

What is going on with the boards of these two companies? Do they think this will fly? I believe they certainly must.

I assume that the people in charge of these companies are rational and experienced, and that they considered the regulatory hurdles before moving forward with this deal. They must think they can get away with this plan, otherwise why bother with the trouble and expense of setting it up in the first place?

They believe it because it almost certainly will fly. Comcast and NBC/Universal went through and we haven't seen any signs of reduction in competition. Especially now that the FCC has made net neutrality the law, there shouldn't be any fear about vertical monopoly over media.

It's absurd to think that media can be constrained into traditional mediums anymore. Television is dying.

Hell, AOL already did this exact merger without any problems.

Did I misread something? How is TWC involved?

No but they obviously have some amount of confidence or they wouldn't have entered into discussions at all.

We are heading towards a world ruled by Global Corporate Council[1] and we don't have Liber8 to resist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(TV_series)#Plot

It hasn't undergone regulatory approval yet, so calm down. :D Remember when regulators planned to block AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile? It could happen here also and just like then I'm sure there will be a public comment period.

Competition without regulation ultimately leads to monopolies. Companies survive because they're better than other companies, and eventually they get big enough to just buy off or crush newer competitors. At this point, the monopoly will either have internal problems resulting in inefficiency, or an external regulator in the form of government.

What's wrong with my logic though?

What's wrong with your logic is that the 'competition' that we see in this world is so highly regulated already. When you get big enough you start writing the laws to protect your monopoly. Organizations like this can't handle competition from tiny technological disruptors because they are like trying to do a 180 in a loaded container ship. They can crush any competition with legal bills and pass that cost on to the customer.

Your logic is spot on.When a natural monopoly arises, it becomes essential regulate but sadly we are too much blinded by regulation free market that obvious is ignored.

Even Adam Smith advocated regulations when its appropriate.

do you know by any chance where I could find a good (as complete as possible) list on M&A deals within pharma industry for the last 20 years, for the 10-20 largest pharma companies? I mean, the biomedical picture you gave a link to is good already but it doesn't have recent Mansanto acquisition and tons of other deals. And Google just gives a small glimpse into such deals here and there but I can't find a comprehensive list yet.

I, for one, am waiting patiently for Amazon Prime Burial ;)

Funnily enough, there is a mutual in the UK (the Co-Op) who will do your banking, sell you groceries, and also bury you.

No need to be patient. You only have to wait two days.

Two DAYS? That's a long time to keep a corpse...

they're bought, and paid for, and all in the knowledge that the majority of the public is too busy voting on social issues (or not voting at all) to change matters.

Reason: cheap money, no ROI to be found elsewhere.

I thought the marketing regulates itself.