It’ll be harder to ditch your ‘bloated’ cable package if AT&T merges with Time Warner, Dish says

Amid sky-high cable bills, many TV viewers have sought to cut costs by firing their TV providers and switching to a relatively new crop of online alternatives offering fewer channels at a lower price. These “skinny bundles” are often streamed live over the Internet and on mobile devices, creating new experiences for TV fans. But that video revolution could be threatened if the government allows AT&T to buy Time Warner, according to one of America's first providers of live-streaming skinny bundles.

Under AT&T's ownership, Time Warner could force those new TV providers to take on more channels than customers want or need, Warren Schlichting, the head of Dish Network's Sling TV, told a federal judge March 26 in AT&T's landmark antitrust trial at the US District Court for the District of Columbia.  “They will jam as many networks as possible into the base package, and you'll have that bloated bundle again,” Schlichting said. “We fight like crazy to keep the network numbers low.” Schlichting also predicted higher prices and more TV blackouts stemming from contract disputes between AT&T-Time Warner and its rivals and business customers.