Andrew Ross Sorkin

Poring through hundreds of pages of documents submitted to the government by T-Mobile and Sprint and transcripts of testimony in front of Congress makes it clear that going from four competitors to three — AT&T, Verizon and a combined T-Mobile-Sprint — wouldn’t pose the problems that so many fear.

Every textbook would say that fewer competitors results in high prices. But if the Sprint-T-Mobile deal was given the green light, it would almost empirically create, at least in the short term, more competition for AT&T and Verizon, not less.

The Meredith Corporation — the owner of Family Circle, Better Homes and Gardens and AllRecipes — agreed to purchase Time Inc. (the publisher of once-prestigious magazine titles including Time, Sports Illustrated and People) in an all-cash transaction valued at nearly $3 billion. The deal was made possible, in part, by an infusion of $650 million from the private equity arm of Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers known for using their wealth and political connections to advance conservative causes. 

Time is said to be in talks to sell itself to the Meredith, in a deal backed by Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers known for supporting conservative causes. The new round of negotiations, motivated by the surprise entry of the Kochs, could lead to a quick deal. The Kochs have tentatively agreed to back Meredith’s offer with an equity injection of more than $500 million. The companies have been negotiating over the past several days, and Meredith is reviewing the latest Time Inc. financial information.

Apparently, the Justice Department has called on AT&T and Time Warner to sell Turner Broadcasting, the group of cable channels that includes CNN, as a potential requirement for approving the companies’ pending $85.4 billion deal. The other possible way for the merger to win approval would be for AT&T to sell its DirecTV division, apparently.

Former Microsoft chief executive Steven Ballmer sought to “figure out what the government really does with the money. What really happens?” He plans to make public a database and a report that he and a small army of economists, professors and other professionals have been assembling as part of a stealth start-up over the last three years called USAFacts. The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments. Ballmer calls it “the equivalent of a 10-K for government,” referring to the kind of annual filing that companies make. “You know, when I really wanted to understand in depth what a company was doing, Amazon or Apple, I’d get their 10-K and read it,” he said. “It’s wonky, it’s this, it’s that, but it’s the greatest depth you’re going to get, and it’s accurate.”

“Let’s be honest, prices aren’t going to go down because of this,” said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research. “I don’t think vertical integration lends itself to consumer benefits.”

The worry among consumer groups and rivals, of course, is that for AT&T to make the deal work strategically and financially, it is going to use Time Warner’s content as a weapon against its rivals by raising the price that they pay for carriage of channels such as HBO and CNN, while integrating those same channels into new AT&T offerings at lower prices. Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, dismissed that notion, calling it “illogical” and saying he wants to “dispel” such an idea. He insisted he has no intention to limit Time Warner’s content on rival systems and that “it doesn’t make business sense” to restrict the distribution of Time Warner programming. Instead, he said, he sees the benefits of the merger coming from the additional data AT&T will be able to provide to Time Warner — and advertisers — about what consumers are watching, as well the ability to create specialized, interactive programming for AT&T’s mobile customers that he expects other distributors will copy. Still, he suggested that his ultimate goal is to create a wireless network using next-generation technology known as 5G that competes not just with wireless providers, but with cable companies, by providing high-speed broadband and television service. “I will be sorely disappointed if we are not going head-to-head” with cable providers by 2021, he said. That notion may be both attractive and unattractive to regulators.