A very special thank you to Donald Trump for this AT&T/Time Warner fiasco - Mashable

President Donald Trump has done something that no other president has done before—and many journalists have tried and failed to do.

He turned a boring media merger into the corporate version of a soap opera. He made it interesting. 

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will be filing a lawsuit to block AT&T's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. It's just the most recent in a bizarre series of developments around what is a massively important move in the media world. 

Importance, however, doesn't mean public interest. Apart from the initial announcement, these kinds of deals tend to be pretty boring. Stories about antitrust, for example, aren't exactly on most people's must-read list. But they should be, assuming you like to watch HBO, use a smartphone to do just about anything, see movies, or read the news. 

Nothing less than the future of the entertainment and news industries are at stake—not to mention how much these companies can charge for their services. 

The AT&T/Time Warner deal is a a pretty wild endeavor. Here's a bit of a rundown:

• Trump regularly goes after CNN during his campaign.

• AT&T announces in October 2016 that it has an agreement to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN.

• Not long after, Trump publicly calls out the deal, saying it's "too much concentration of power."

• Trump continues to attack CNN through the election, tweeting throughout his presidency with complaints about the media outlet.

• People in the Trump administration reportedly saw Time Warner's ownership of CNN as "a potential point of leverage" to pressure a change in CNN's coverage.

• Trump appointed a head of the Department of Justice's antitrust operation that said this about the deal: "I don't see this as a major antitrust problem."

• The talks between AT&T and the DOJ leak, with initial reports saying that the DOJ told AT&T it would need to sell CNN for the deal to go through. That led to a variety of reports that contradicted each other over what the DOJ had told AT&T and what AT&T told the DOJ. The only thing that seemed clear was that CNN was an important part of the talks.

By corporate merger standards, this is a grease fire on which everyone is dumping more water, especially Trump. His constant attacks on CNN will certainly make up an important point in AT&T's argument that the DOJ—and its antitrust regulator who publicly stated the deal looked fine—should just approve the deal. 

Meanwhile, the DOJ is trying to do damage control while arguably causing even more harm. During a background call with reporters, a DOJ spokesperson reportedly sniped at news outlets associated with the companies involved—which was read as a veiled threat at CNN.

A specific, not-very veiled suggestion: CNN's reporting on the merger is biased. "Some of these merging parties are in the business of providing content," said a DOJ official, who sounded aggrieved. "I'm in the business of providing the facts and the law." https://t.co/2wHhUhPakI

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) November 20, 2017

This is great. Rarely do these kinds of deals get such attention or have such enjoyable storylines. But they should. 

Major mergers have been receiving a minimal amount of scrutiny in recent decades, leading to a recurring cycle of consolidation that resulted in the emergence of tremendously powerful companies that keep getting bigger to stay one step ahead of each other. Trump's FCC is fueling even more mergers, undoing rules that tried to limit how much of the U.S. media ecosystem any one company could own. 

Meanwhile, the media mega-corporations are competing against a relatively new foe: big tech companies. Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are all making big movies into the media world, snapping up consumer attention time, advertising dollars, and content creators. Those companies are now routinely mentioned as a reason media companies need to get bigger.

Now, all of these issues are coming to the forefront, topped off with a bit of Trump spice. It's our best chance yet at having a serious discussion about these issues around a topic that has captured at least some of the public's imagination. 

The case could also trigger bigger discussions around how major tech companies should be seen as competitors to media companies. Such a discussion would represent an important consideration of the power of tech companies, which is sorely needed. The new tech titans have almost entirely avoided competitive scrutiny, and only recently have they been having to discuss their power due to Russia's attempts at swinging the 2016 election. 

I think the big losers of the DOJ suing to block the @ATT deal will be @FB and @Google. Their media advertising , content and distribution dominance will be a defense at trial. That could create bigger issues for them

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 20, 2017

Let's give credit where credit is due: None of this happens without Donald Trump constantly attacking CNN. Now, we're set up for a pretty serious lawsuit in which antitrust regulators will have to consider the effect that big media mergers have on the industry as a whole and how big tech companies play into the market. 

These are essential questions that academics, analysts, and politicians will be wrestling with for years. Thanks, Mr. President.

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