Ownership

It’s the biggest assignment in journalism: Take a set-in-its-ways 167-year-old news organization and reconfigure it radically so that it can compete on the global stage against countless young digital upstarts. If it’s done right, billions of people could end up with trusted, independent, impartial news they would never otherwise have had access to. On the other hand, if it’s done wrong — or if it’s not assigned at all — then one of the world’s most storied newswires might be entering its final years.

The face-off, between the Justice Department and AT&T over the company’s $85 billion agreement to buy media giant Time Warner, has broad ramifications for media, technology and other industries as well as for the government’s powers to deter large-scale corporate consolidation.

Would the combination of AT&T and Time Warner hurt consumers or help them? 

IHeartRadio’s parent company, iHeartMedia, filed for bankruptcy protection in an attempt to restructure part of the $20 billion debt load that has burdened it since a leveraged buyout a decade ago, on the eve of the 2008 recession. The company announced that it had reached agreements with creditors to reduce its debt by more than $10 billion. It said it would continue to operate its stations during the process. 

“Desigend by Apple in California. Assembled in China”. For the past decade the words embossed on the back of iPhones have served as shorthand for the technological bargain between the world’s two biggest economies: America supplies the brains and China the brawn. Not any more. China’s world-class tech giants, Alibaba and Tencent, have market values of around $500 billion, rivalling Facebook’s. China has the largest online-payments market. Its equipment is being exported across the world. It has the fastest supercomputer.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released, for the first time, preliminary statistics and an accompanying report exploring the size and growth of the digital economy. Goods and services that are primarily digital accounted for 6.5 percent of the US economy, or $1.2 trillion, in 2016, after a decade of growing faster than the US economy overall, BEA’s research shows. 

[Commentary] A large and growing group of voices, including those from legislators, journalists, FiberTower shareholders and trade associations, argues that AT&T’s purchase of FiberTower’s millimeter wave licenses is a sweetheart deal that undervalues that spectrum—spectrum those in the industry believe is critical to the rollout of 5G.  Most recently, Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA), in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, claimed that the agency signed off on AT&T’s FiberTower purchase without holding an open debate about the transaction.

US District Judge Richard Leon said a trial to decide if AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner is legal under US antitrust law may last six to eight weeks, significantly longer than previously forecast. At a pre-trial hearing, Judge Leon said he will hear up to two days of motions before hearing opening arguments on March 21. Lawyers for the government and both companies did not comment on Leon’s estimate on the length of the trial; they had previously suggested it would last three weeks.

One of the most important antitrust cases in recent decades, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) move to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner, goes to trial in Washington, DC, on March 19. The significance of the case goes well beyond its impact on this huge transaction and on future media mergers.

For years, the self-appointed leaders of Silicon Valley were young people — mostly men — with age-appropriate behavior. Their successes were cheered, and their sins were shrugged off as the cost of innovation. There’s a lot of growing up happening in today’s tech industry, where former whiz kids made their fortunes and are now settling down, starting families and starting to think about their legacies.