Getting Bigger For Bigness' Sake: AT&T Announces Deal To Buy DirecTV, A Deal That Even Confuses Wall St.
from the well-we-gotta-buy-something dept
This has been rumored for a bit, but over the weekend AT&T officially announced plans to buy DirecTV for $50 billion. DirecTV is one of the companies perpetually being bought and sold (or rumored to be). The company has been involved in more aborted mergers than I can remember. Either way, while Wall Street folks often like just about any merger announcement (mergers and later spinoffs are great moneymakers for the banks), even it has been scratching its head at this particular deal. At best, it seems like a sort of reaction to Comcast-Time Warner Cable and an attempt to get bigger for the sake of bigness. Though, of course, it's getting bigger in a pretty saturated market (and one that is actually on the decline due to cord cutting). Perhaps it's an admission that AT&T's own TV service, Uverse, just hasn't done that well. Or maybe it's just an admission that AT&T is swimming in too much cash.Either way, if both this and the Comcast/TWC merger go through, then we'll have an almost complete duopoly on pay TV. Congress wasted no time in announcing that hearings will have to be held about the potential merger, and, as with the Comcast deal, expect months of puffed up rhetoric and questionable op-ed pieces, as lobbyists work over time to make sure the deal happens. Of course, there is another way that the public can make their own statement on all of this: cut the cord and stop relying on terrible pay TV deals that really just aren't worth it any more.
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Filed Under: acquisition, merger, pay tv, satellite
Companies: at&t, directv
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They were before?
I remember paying to watch TV...yeah those were the (lazy) days eh? Just hang out on the couch watching whatever bullshit media they wanted to cram down my throat that night... or on the weekends.
Goddamn it was nice not having enough other stuff to do to keep my occupied.
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Ain’t that the perfect way to describe cancer?
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TV has pretty much run its course
TV drama has largely been replaced with "reality" shows, which are designed to appeal to people with the intellectual and emotional maturity of a 13-year-old. What dramas remain are essential puff pieces for police, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, SWAT teams, and the military.
TV comedy is formulaic and stale.
TV talk shows, ditto.
Sports still holds some appeal (depending on if one's into that) and some of the coverage is quite good: ESPN's "30 for 30" video essays are uneven, but when they're good, they're very good. But it's increasingly more difficult to remain interested in pro sports, where players often earn insane salaries and behave like illiterate thugs.
Movies? They're butchered. Or DRM'd. Or both. Hollywood has made it so incredibly difficult and annoying that instead of pirating them, now I just don't even bother. Maybe I'll see their latest award-winning flick in 5 or 10 years, maybe not. It no longer matters to me...which should frighten the hell out of them, as "apathy" is a far worse enemy than piracy.
Educational programming? PBS is shilling for money every time I check or showing frauds like Deepak Chopra, a con man and snake-oil salesman. The History, Discovery, Learning, etc. channels are nonstop reality shitholes.
Culture? Bravo and A&E used to at least make some attempts to bring theater, dance, etc. to the screen. Now? Reality shitholes.
Really the only high-quality channel I can think of out of the dozens that Comcast provides in its extended basic package is TCM: Turner Classic Movies. At least they show the damn movies without butchering them and interrupting them, and Robert Osborne et.al. deliver interesting commentary.
(As an aside, I took the time recently to check how many channels I've NEVER watched. 54. 54 channels that I'm paying for and have no interest in but Comcast insist on packaging. No wonder they're afraid of a la carte.)
I've been fiddling with an antenna, for the first time in a long time. (I'm in a difficult location. It's going to take some tweaking.) If I can pull in enough channels, then Comcast will be gone...until of course Verizon gets around to abandoning its copper plant in my neighborhood, at which point my DSL will stop working and my one and only choice for "high-speed" Internet will be Comcast. (No FIOS here. Never will be either.)
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Re: TV has pretty much run its course
Of course, I don't even have to do that because my local library offers all I could ever want to watch for free.
So I'm left with a lot of money to spend on things like live theatre and live music, and I can easily say my life is so much better.
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Re: TV has pretty much run its course
TV ?
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Re: TV has pretty much run its course
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Pay TV Deals - No "Current" Alternative
If I could figure out how to get non delayed Doctor Who from the BBC my cord would be cut tomorrow.
The "pay TV deal" forces me into a top tier package just to get BBC America.
You reading that BBC? Alternative business models that put content in the hands of viewers appreciated.
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Re: Pay TV Deals - No "Current" Alternative
Reconsider how much you're paying to keep up with the latest episode of a TV show - maybe enough for a plane ticket to England.
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I think where they have most people, though, is sports.
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*tried* to cut the cord, but SWMBO likes watching sports even more than i do (which is less and less); its not so easy to do what you want -even as a matter of principle- when your significant other doesn't have the same fervor for these issues...
besides, with the grandmonsters who visit, it would be unacceptable to NOT have Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans, or whatever crap they watch...
so, i can be all Screw The Man, man ! ! ! but it don't mean shit when you don't control your own destiny...
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Sorry, the BBC is hog-tied by its charter - it's publicly funded. They should provide a YouTube-based service of programmes that have already aired and either ask for sponsorship to make more of them or advertise their other programmes. That is the only advertising they're allowed to do, per the Charter.
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I pulled the cord then and haven't paid another month of paid tv broadcasts. I despise a commercial and it's been a long time since I heard a commercial on tv. Not hard considering I don't own one anymore and am not thinking of buying a new method of having my very own spy in the living room.
So let them run up the price on PPV. I could care less because I am not one of their customers and am not going to be one as long as the present methodology continues. I don't look for it to change and I'm good with that cause they are not getting any money from me.
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Re:
Yes in the Uk you still have to pay for line rental which is used to keep the system up and running. but even then it is super cheap for even those in the UK where anyone can afford dsl and reliable dsl in most areas.
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Pay for net, get free tv
I had always paid for basic cable (ok, actually "enhanced" cable, since basic has none of the popular cable stations), but since I didn't ever order PPV, I would skip their box and just plug in to my tv.
Then I realized, if I'm getting an Internet connection, they don't have a convenient way to turn off the cable tv signal. Sure, they could come out & climb the pole & install a filter, but they're not doing that, are they?
So now I just order an Internet-only connection from the cable company, hook up a splitter, and the tv connection just works. Even a few of the digital channels.
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Re: Pay for net, get free tv
Here's how the logic goes: Just because it's technically feasible doesn't make it right. You're watching TV that you're not paying for using unauthorized equipment.
I remember the backlash when people were hacking DirecTV (and Dishnet for that matter) back in the mid-90s.
God forbid people modify the equipment that they purchased to decrypt a signal that was being broadcast into their back yard whether they paid for it or not...
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Re: Pay for net, get free tv
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I don't think that AT&T will abandon uverse just yet, but its reach is seriously hampered by the effective distance of a digital signal over an unshielded phone wire. UVerse is probably already extended about as far as it's going go without going fiber over the last mile, and people without DSL are ditching their residential lines in favor of wireless anyway. Wireless is more profitable, but can't support video. Satellite would fill in the the large gaps in uverse's service. (http://www.att.com/u-verse/availability/caim-out-of-footprint.jsp)
Personally, I think that people shouldn't expect these services to be bundled together, but that's where the market is for the immediate future. In the long term, however, everything will eventually switch to more internet based video-on-demand and voice services. Without the solid infrastructure to support the raising demand for internet video, it's going to take more than Direct TV to save AT&T.
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Win/Win
In which case they win. Or that fact is recognized by suddenly public-spirited lawmakers and the Comcast/TWC merger is sunk. In which case they win.
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stepping stone
Sometimes a merger that appears to make little sense in itself might make much more sense when viewed as just a stepping stone in a long-term strategy.
I think AT&T's ultimate goal is to own Comcast ... in which case there would no longer be a duopoly.
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Have you actually tried to "Cut the cord?"
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