April 05, 2018
The U.S. Department of Justice confronted AT&T executives with their own words in D.C. federal court on Thursday to illustrate the alleged underlying motives behind the proposed Time Warner merger, including one exchange deriding programmers licensing content to online distributors as "short-sighted whores" undermining traditional pay-TV providers.
April 04, 2018
The D.C. federal judge hearing the U.S. Department of Justice's challenge to AT&T and Time Warner's merger Wednesday seemed to be considering ways to improve the companies' offer to arbitrate pay-TV pricing disputes over programming supplied by Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting unit, and perhaps permit the tie-up with conditions.
April 03, 2018
At least one pay-TV provider could lose 9 percent of its subscribers if denied Turner Broadcasting's content, a U.S. Department of Justice witness said Tuesday in D.C. federal court, only for Time Warner and AT&T to attack the number and the reasons for the study that produced it.
April 02, 2018
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday used a former top Turner Broadcasting negotiator to illustrate the lengths to which Time Warner might go, if acquired by AT&T, to leverage its content for higher carriage rates from pay-TV providers.
March 29, 2018
Comcast Cable's content acquisition chief dealt a blow to the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday in D.C. federal court when he said that he doesn't expect the AT&T-Time Warner merger to have an impact on his negotiating strategy.
March 28, 2018
Turner Broadcasting CEO John Martin downplayed the importance Wednesday of the company's "must-have" content the government says AT&T and parent company Time Warner could leverage if their merger goes through, arguing that many programmers describe their popular material as must-have.
March 27, 2018
The Dish executive in charge of its online live television service said in D.C. federal court Tuesday that he stopped reading a trial transcript in the AT&T-Time Warner merger case, which should have been kept from him, just as he'd "gotten to the good stuff."
March 26, 2018
A witness' sneak peek at a trial transcript prompted a warning Monday from the D.C. federal judge overseeing the AT&T-Time Warner merger challenge trial: Any future witnesses who find out about the testimony of their peers will be struck from the case.
March 26, 2018
The U.S. Department of Justice's blockbuster trial over AT&T's planned purchase of Time Warner kicked off in a packed D.C. courtroom last week, and the first days of the proceedings provide some clues about what might be key issues in the case and how things might unfold over the five to seven weeks that it is expected to last.
March 23, 2018
The U.S. Department of Justice is likely to come out swinging Monday on its first full day of witness testimony in the AT&T-Time Warner merger trial, putting on the stand an executive from Sling TV, a chief competitive threat to AT&T's DirecTV, as well as the head of Time Warner's Turner.