Wireless service provider and John Oliver’s business daddy AT&T agreed to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc, according to the New York Times this morning. WarnerMedia is the home to many popular brands like HBO, CNN, and DC Comics. Discovery is the home of popular cable channels like The Food Network, HGTV, Animal Planet, and, of course, The Discovery Channel. The deal was reported to be worth $130 Billion by Bloomberg.
AT&T got into the media content creation business 3 years ago when it acquired WarnerMedia for $85 Billion dollars. The purchase had to go through a serious challenge from the US Department of Justice before it could take place. When the deal went through, shareholders of the communications giant envisioned a world where everyone would be streaming Warner content on their iPhones over the AT&T 5G network. “The content and creative talent at Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner are first-rate. Combine all that with AT&T’s strengths in direct-to-consumer distribution, and we offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first entertainment experience,” AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement. “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry work for consumers, content creators, is distributors, and advertisers.”
This new deal could indicate that AT&T may have been a bit out of its depth when it came to overseeing a media mega-corporation. Their purchase of Warner shook up the studio’s plans, rushing the launch of HBOMax without securing platform deals with industry leaders like Roku and Amazon, and the collapse of boutique streamer DCUniverse.
Pending the approval of the deal by Discovery shareholders and industry regulators, the new company will become the biggest media content creator, bigger than Netflix or NBCUniversal. The new company will join AT&T’s WarnerMedia’s immensely popular HBO, along with sports-heavy cable networks TNT and TBS, with Discovery’s strong lineup of reality-based cable channels and a large international sports business.
