AT&T Inc.’s agreement to buy Time Warner Inc. for $85.4 billion would form a media and telecommunications empire that owns many of the movies and TV shows it pumps through to subscribers, provided that regulators sign off on a deal at a time that they and lawmakers have grown skeptical of media consolidation.
The deal caps AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson’s vision to expand into media and entertainment as his company’s wireless, internet and pay-TV services businesses mature. Gaining premium cable channel HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studio means AT&T becomes a content owner rather than just a distributor of video -- giving it extra reach amid disruptive changes in the ways that viewers decide what, and how, to watch.
