From AOL Time Warner to DirecTV and Dish: 20 years of media mergers

1 week ago

This week, DirecTV announced it intends to buy Dish, Sling TV, and the rest of EchoStar’s television business for a dollar (while also taking on all of Dish’s debt), combining almost 20 million satellite TV subscribers from two companies that have been circling one another for decades.

But it’s not just DirecTV and Dish. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, General Electric, GM, News Corp, Tumblr, and the various incarnations of Time Warner have also gotten mixed up or split up while trying to bridge the gap between communications and media over the years.

Here’s a partial timeline of the events that might end with these two companies joining together at last.

AOL, meet Time Warner

At the turn of the 21st century, it was obvious that the internet was the future. Instant communication between anyone in the world and the idea of digital distribution was irresistible, and AOL seemed on top of the world.

What better way for Time Warner to get in on the ground floor than to join forces with the company that rode to the top, one 60-hours-of-free-internet CD at a time? By 2009, it was all over.

AOL, meet Time Warner. This timeline of the 2000s includes a first merger attempt for DirecTV and Dish that was blocked on antitrust grounds and AOL’s dreadful combination with Time Warner that was undone in 2009.

The satellite era is upon us, and the telecoms enter the chat

Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T’s acquisitions were an attempt to take over the media landscape built on their networks, with varying degrees of success, delivering brands like Oath, WarnerMedia, and Peacock, as well as the entirely forgettable Go90.

The satellite era — and AT&T enters the chat. The mega media mergers get bigger in the 2010s, with Comcast buying NBCUniversal, AT&T acquiring DirecTV, and Verizon buying AOL, Yahoo, and Tumblr. The deal that didn’t happen is Comcast’s failed attempt to swallow Time Warner, so AT&T bought that too, renaming it WarnerMedia.

Welcome to the streaming future

Over the next few years, AT&T executives float bad ideas for Game of Thrones like shooting “snackable” vertical video versions. The company eventually introduced HBO Max before demoting HBO from its streaming brand, renaming the service Max.

You know what happened next: Netflix never looked back on its path to 270 million global subscribers, and Disney reintroduced the bundle for streaming. At the same time, both Quibi and CNN Plus evaporated too quickly to make an impact.

Ultimately, Verizon sold what was left of Oath to Apollo Global Management, and then AT&T shipped WarnerMedia off into a partnership with Discovery. Now, AT&T is selling all of DirecTV to TPG. That’s the private equity firm behind this new $1 attempt at merging with Dish Network, again, while EchoStar can continue on its quest to build a nationwide Open RAN 5G network.

We’ll see everyone back here in another 20 years to find out how it all worked out, ok?

Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

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