Senators say they have “strong concerns”
Democratic senators urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “closely scrutinize” and to reject AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner if Sessions finds that “substantial harms to competition and consumers arising from the transaction outweigh the purported benefits.”
In a letter to Sessions (full text here), eleven Democratic senators including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Al Franken and Sherrod Brown wrote that they “have strong concerns that the combined company’s unmatched control of popular content and the distribution of that content will lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and poorer quality services for Americans – substantial harms that cannot be remedied with unreliable, unenforceable, and time-limited behavioral conditions. … Combining these behemoths would create a mega media conglomerate with both the incentive and the ability to favor its own content over that of other entertainment companies and to restrict competing video distributors from accessing that content, harming its competitors and ultimately consumers. While the companies have suggested that the proposed deal will result in certain consumer benefits, they have thus far failed to demonstrate that these purported benefits are either merger-specific or sufficient to outweigh the substantial harms of the deal.”
In particular, the Senators said that they were worried that AT&T would raise consumer prices, favor its own content over others or even “restrict its subscribers’ access to alternative viewpoints, such as those offered by competing news outlets like Fox, MSNBC, or Breitbart.” They were also skeptical about the efficacy of any behavioral conditions that the Justice Department might put on the deal, saying that “AT&T itself has a similarly troubling track record when it comes to compliance with its past promises,” citing price hikes after the DirecTV acquisition as an example.
For its part, AT&T responded in a statement that: “We’ve addressed all of the issues raised by this letter in AT&T’s and Time Warner’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last January, in our February 2017 response to this same group of Senators, as well as in the extensive review of this transaction currently in process at the Department of Justice. Specifically, we’ve highlighted how our merger is about giving consumers more choices, not less. Our DirecTV Now product is a small example of how we can provide consumers more control over the content they purchase, and how, where and when they view content. We have also detailed how the transaction will expand distribution and creative opportunities for diverse and independent voices. Finally, we continue to believe that free data services are a huge consumer benefit that saves consumers money.”
As Reuters has reported, President Donald Trump has chosen Makan Delrahim as his nominee for U.S. assistant attorney general for anti-trust — the country’s top anti-trust regulator. However, the Senate has not yet confirmed Delrahim and “it is not clear when they will vote,” Reuters noted.
