The blueprint for the disastrous AT&T-Time Warner deal was written years ago by the Comcast-NBC merger
In the aftermath of a federal judge's approval Tuesday of the mega-merger between AT&T and Time Warner, you'll be reading about how this deal will vastly remake the entertainment and information landscape, most likely at consumers' expense.
That take is absolutely true. What's being overstated, however, is that this deal is unique. It's not. Its template was laid out in 2011 by what was then the biggest such "vertical" merger in the information and entertainment sectors: Comcast's $30-billion takeover of NBCUniversal.
That earlier deal united a big Internet service provider with a big purveyor of content. It was pitched as bringing huge benefits to
