Meg James

Long known as the squabbling siblings of media, CBS Corp and Viacom Inc are poised to finally reunite after 13 years apart. The much-anticipated corporate union, which will be called ViacomCBS Inc. and be valued at about $25 billion, is set to conclude Dec 4 after the markets close. The Viacom name gets top billing even though CBS is more valuable.

After years of on-again, off-again merger talks, broadcast giant CBS and its corporate sibling Viacom finally agreed to reunite in a $12-billion deal that will bring together such well-known brands as CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and Showtime. CBS, which is the larger of the two companies and worth $18.5 billion, will absorb the smaller Viacom, which owns such assets as MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central and the Paramount Pictures movie studio in Hollywood.

Comcast triumphed over the Walt Disney in a hard-fought battle for Sky television, by offering $39 billion for the satellite-TV service that has 23 million customers in five European countries. Sky’s independent board members must approve the winning bid  and shareholders must ratify the deal before the sale will be complete. Soon, Comcast will have a presence in some of the most prosperous countries in Europe — Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox shareholders overwhelmingly approved Disney’s proposed $71.3-billion takeover of much of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox — a milestone in a merger that is expected to dramatically reshape the entertainment industry. The deal’s contours began to form nearly a year ago over wine between Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger and Murdoch at the elder mogul’s Moraga vineyard above Bel-Air.

Rupert Murdoch is one of the most driven moguls in media, defying the odds for more than a half-century to build a global media empire from a small newspaper in Australia. So many people were startled to learn the 86-year-old tycoon and his sons appear willing to sell some of their prized 21st Century Fox media assets.  Walt Disney Co approached the Murdoch family in recent months to inquire about buying key Fox properties, including the Los Angeles-based movie and television studios, cable TV channels FX and National Geographic, and Fox’s international TV operations.

An estimated 17,000 AT&T technicians in California and Nevada went on strike March 22, highlighting workplace tensions within the massive Dallas-based telecommunications giant. The strike follows a protracted dispute between AT&T and union members affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, District 9, who have been working without a contract for nearly a year.

Workers say they have been increasingly asked to perform the duties of higher-paid employees without the same level of compensation. Union members also have been upset by AT&T’s closure of US based call centers, including a facility near Anaheim, to hire workers in overseas locations. They contend that AT&T has moved thousands of call center jobs in recent years to the Philippines, Mexico and other countries. March 9’s walkout, which began at 6 a.m., was to protest what the union said was AT&T’s demand that technicians who typically install and maintain the company’s U-Verse TV service also work on the cables, hardware and other infrastructure used to provide landline phone service (AT&T’s wireless division is not affected by the action).

Media companies are preparing for some whirlwind courtships in what’s expected to be the biggest merger bonanza in years.

Verizon, the nation’s largest phone company with more than 114 million wireless subscribers, could pair up with Charter Communications, which has more than 17 million customers in such key markets as Los Angeles, New York and Dallas. This romance and others appear to be blooming one week after President Donald Trump took office and designated a new Federal Communications Commission chairman who favors a more hands-off approach to government regulation than his predecessor.

Traditional media companies desperate for growth don’t want to get left behind as rivals bulk up in an effort to survive a more difficult environment. “What is driving this [merger activity] is challenges in these businesses,” said Matthew Harrigan, a senior analyst with Wunderlich Securities. “There are not a lot of elephants on the savanna, and when one moves, you have to move too.” Trump administration appointees are expected to be friendlier to corporate mergers, returning to a traditional Republican openness to approving major deals after eight years of heightened scrutiny — and some major rejections — under Democratic appointees of former President Barack Obama.

Hollywood had been backing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which President Trump formally withdrew from on Jan 23. Though the agreement wasn’t all that Hollywood hoped, its lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America, supported the deal because it felt the deal would further open Asian markets to film distribution and combat piracy. The MPAA said the deal would:
1) Strengthen copyright protections: The treaty ensured that copyright owners of digital material had the exclusive right to make their works available online. It extended the length of copyright protection to the life of the creator plus 70 years, which protected film studios.
2) Forbid governments from requiring companies to turn over encryption keys: This measure was seen in Hollywood as a breakthrough to maintain security and curtail digital theft.
3) Eliminate tariffs on DVDs and other film storage products: For movie studios, the trade deal was seen as helpful because it would remove tariffs on digital cinema packs and 35-millimeter film.
4) Remove local partnership requirement: The agreement would prevent governments from requiring that a company or person, as a condition for importing movies or television shows, establish a contractual relationship with a local distributor.

AT&T’s blockbuster bid for Time Warner might be a boon for investment bankers, lawyers and lobbyists, but it is anyone’s guess whether investors, employees and consumers ultimately would benefit from the combination. AT&T estimated that it could achieve $1 billion in cost savings in three years after buying Time Warner. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson promised the merger would transform media because AT&T would be able to create new subscription and advertising models. Time Warner movies and popular TV shows like “The Big Bang Theory” could be promoted to AT&T cellphone customers. But some analysts have expressed doubts that such a massive tie-up will pan out the way that Stephenson and Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes hope — should the federal regulators allow the two companies to come together.

There’s good reason for skepticism: Many mergers fail to live up to the hype. “Most of them don’t work out,” said Rita Gunther McGrath, a management professor at Columbia Business School. “And the success rates for the big ones are abysmal.” Problems include challenges integrating disparate business units, conflicts in corporate culture and getting beat by rivals who respond faster to changes in market conditions.

Cable television company Comcast gained customers in the third quarter, bucking industry trends, and its broadcast of the Rio Summer Olympics hauled in $1.6 billion in revenue. Comcast announced that it gained a net 32,000 cable television subscribers during the July-through-September quarter, compared with a loss of 48,000 in the same quarter in 2015. The industry leader also gained 330,000 high-speed Internet customers, a slight increase over the year-earlier quarter. Comcast now has 28 million customers.

The company’s stock, however, was down $1.59, or 2.5%, to $62.94 around 8:30 a.m. Pacific time. Wall Street analysts have been eager to hear whether AT&T’s blockbuster $85.4-billion deal to buy Time Warner Inc. might prompt Comcast to rush out and buy a wireless phone company such as T-Mobile or Sprint to achieve the same kind of scale. Over the years, Comcast has been more acquisitive than most media conglomerates, buying entertainment company NBCUniversal in 2011 and DreamWorks Animation last summer.