by Jennifer Smith at The Daily Mail
AT&T CEO John Stankey said on Tuesday he is ‘sad’ and ‘disappointed’ that his attempt to take the company into the media streaming business didn’t pay off.
On Monday, AT&T announced it was spinning off its media assets and merging them to create Discovery+.
It will create a behemoth in the streaming world and will rival Netflix and Disney.
But it also represents a failure by AT&T to make their own presence known in streaming after blowing $84billion on Time Warner in 2016.
Comcast had just made a similar move in acquiring NBCUniversal and the Time Warner deal was AT&T’s shot at the industry.
But the deal wasn’t finalized until 2018, after a series of anti-trust investigations and set-backs.
AT&T never launched their own streaming service as a result, and Netflix, Disney, Amazon and HBO Max soared to new heights by pumping billions into new content.
Stankey told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday he is ‘sad’ that he couldn’t make it work for the company.
‘The personal reaction is I’m a bit sad. I’m disappointed that the shift in the market that occurred caused us to have to step back and re-evaluate.’
He also blamed the failure on the antitrust proceedings which he says stalled it.
‘You can’t cry over spilled milk, but had the transaction been approved a year earlier and not gone through the ridiculous approval process… [AT&T] would have had a leg up,’ he said.
Stankey added that while telecomms and media could merge in the future, now is not the time.
‘I won’t conclude that there isn’t possibly going to be that kind of reordering in the industry over time. But for right now…that’s probably a mismatch at this juncture,’ he said…
Continue Reading