AT&T/DirecTV Gets Hotter Seat In Senate

The AT&T/DirecTV deal got a bit rougher treatment at the hands of both witnesses and legislators in the Senate antitrust subcommittee's hearing on the deal.

From the outset, Subcommittee Chairman Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) set the tone. “We’re not here to judge whether the merger is better for the bottom lines of these two companies or their shareholders, we’ll leave that to Wall Street,” Chairman Klobuchar said in her opening statement. "What we’re here to do is to make sense of what it will mean for consumers across the country,” Chairman Klobuchar said. She had questions about the deal's size and impact on programming and over-the-top video competition. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said he has problems with the deal. Sen Al Franken (D-MN) said that when AT&T had promised to offer standalone broadband as part of the deal to buy BellSouth back in 2006, AT&T did not promote that option, but instead "hid" the offering. Sen Franken said that sounded like a promise not kept. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson did not respond to that characterization, though during a House hearing on the deal earlier in the day, he said a blogger's characterization that AT&T had not fulfilled all its promises in that BellSouth deal was patently untrue.