Get Ready for Big Media to Get Bigger After AT&T Victory
The ruling for the Time Warner acquisition ends any hope that Trump’s arrival in Washington would usher in a wave of populist antitrust crackdowns.
On June 12, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon approved AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc., rejecting the federal government’s ham-handed effort to block the deal. Leon ruled that the government had failed to make its case that the combination of AT&T, the country’s biggest pay-TV distributor, with Time Warner, the owner of CNN, HBO, TNT, TBS, and Warner Bros., would hurt competition and lead to higher prices. The judge approved the deal with no conditions.
It was an ignominious outcome not just for Makan Delrahim, Trump’s antitrust chief at the U.S. Department of Justice, but for anyone still clinging to the faint hope that Trump’s arrival in Washington might usher in an era of populist antitrust crackdowns. Far from dealing a decisive blow to the monopolistic creep of corporate America, the government’s failure against AT&T will probably have the opposite effect. Consolidation will accelerate. Big media will grow bigger.