AT&T’s promise of better pay-TV prices and service is ‘bordering on the absurd’

When AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2018 for $85 billion, the companies said the deal would be great for consumers, who would benefit from lower prices and improved service. The Justice Department said the opposite, predicting the merger would give AT&T so much market power that price hikes and channel blackouts were all but inevitable. And now we know. The government was right.

AT&T, after raising subscriber costs, wants to pay as little as possible for channels included on its pay-TV services. But it wants as much as possible from other pay-TV services for its own channels. And it’s willing to hold consumers hostage to get what it wants. Einer Elhauge, a professor at Harvard Law School, said the current circumstances “seem to be precisely what the Department of Justice predicted would happen after the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, and precisely what AT&T successfully persuaded the trial court was implausible for it to ever do post-merger.” His verdict? “It looks like the court just got it wrong.”