| | | | By the end of this weekend, AT&T could strike a deal to acquire Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros.
The news developed quickly during the day on Friday. The WSJ said the deal talks were "advanced..." Then Bloomberg said the terms "value Time Warner at about $110 a share and are structured as a 50-50 cash and stock split..." WSJ said "between $105 and $110 a share..." And late Friday, Reuters said the two sides have reached an "agreement in principle."
Several sources said AT&T is eager to get the agreement done by Monday morning. There is buzz about other potential bidders (Apple?) but there's nothing concrete. Here's what Paul R. La Monica and I wrote for CNNMoney...
-- WSJ: "Apple continues to monitor the situation, a person familiar with the situation said..." | | | "AT&T Aims for an Empire" | | | Why does a company specializing in wireless phone service want to own CNN, HBO and Warner Bros? AT&T needs to diversify; it wants to own content; and it thinks Time Warner's brands are best in class. This deal would strengthen the company's hand versus Verizon, Comcast, and a whole host of tech companies like Google and Apple. NYT's Saturday headline: "AT&T Aims for an Empire..." | | | Friday's headlines got me thinking about the summer of 2014, when Rupert Murdoch's Fox made an $85-a-share offer for Time Warner. Back then, a senior source told me Murdoch was the wrong bidder at the wrong time. "Wait two or three years," the source said, "and Time Warner will be on the market." Sure enough, here we are, two years later... | | | (What a difference a day makes) | | | It was only Thursday afternoon that Bloomberg said "senior executives at AT&T and Time Warner have met in recent weeks to discuss various business strategies including a possible merger..." | | | Time Warner closed at $79.24 on Wednesday. After Bloomberg's report about deal talks on Thursday, shares closed at $82.99. After Friday's numerous reports, shares closed at $89.48. The stock is up another 3% in after-hours trading. A $110-per-share deal would value TWX at $86 billion, making this "the biggest acquisition of the year, surpassing Bayer AG's $66 billion takeover of U.S. seed giant Monsanto..." | | How high will they be? WSJ's Shalini Ramachandran tweets:
"The bull regulatory case for AT&T-TWX: it's a vertical merger, Comcast-NBCU was blessed and gives a blueprint. The bear case: Regulators have worried Comcast-NBCU conditions weren't tough enough & enforceable. AT&T is ginormous." And "FCC's Tom Wheeler, who's tough on big deals, may stick around till summer 2017 if Hillary's elected."
Wait, the FCC? I didn't know this til I read her story: "Time Warner owns one broadcast station, WPCH-TV in Atlanta, which falls under the FCC's jurisdiction, and may also have other distribution operations under FCC oversight..."
-- Brian Lowry emails: While a deal of this magnitude deserves regulatory scrutiny, given that Comcast was allowed to acquire NBCUniversal, one would think this content-distribution wedding would also pass muster, while likely being forced to jump through a few obligatory hoops... | | | "Time Warner Cable" doesn't even exist anymore! | | | Ooof. This could have been easily avoided. "NBC Nightly News" showed the Time Warner Cable logo instead of the Time Warner logo on Friday's newscast. Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner in 2009... And it doesn't even exist anymore... Now that it's part of Charter. A couple other news outlets made the same mistake... | | Former Fox exec Peter Chernin "is destined to take a major role overseeing Time Warner" if the deal happens, THR's Kim Masters reports. Chernin already does business with AT&T through a web video joint venture with his Chernin Group. He was on CNBC praising AT&T on Thursday. And he is said to be informally advising AT&T about the deal.
"Chernin, 65, is said to be uninterested in a day-to-day executive job, but that does not preclude a significant role overseeing the combined company's content operations," Masters writes... | | | AMC, Discovery, Scripps next? | | | Paul R. La Monica notes: A Time Warner acquisition may cause Fox and Disney to consider big deals of their own too. To that end, shares of three other big cable programming companies -- AMC, Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks -- all surged Friday as well... | | -- On Richard Quest's CNNI show, Paul and I had some fun with the fact that Time Warner isn't returning our calls about the deal talks...
-- Echoes of AOL TIME WARNER? Peter Kafka responds: "AT&T isn't AOL. Neither is Time Warner." More...
-- Edmund Lee's take: "Here's why it doesn't make sense for AT&T to own Time Warner..."
-- WSJ: "With AT&T's $117.3 billion in long-term debt at the end of June, a Time Warner deal could give the telecom company a balance sheet with debt hitting almost $200 billion, according to analysts at New Street Research..." | | | Gretchen Carlson on the cover of Time | | Sexual harassment is "everywhere," Gretchen Carlson says. In an exclusive interview with Time mag, out Friday morning, the former Fox anchor says she has heard from women all across the country since she sued Roger Ailes. The cover says "Carlson Wants to Change the Way Women Fight Sexual Harassment."
According to Time, Carlson "declined to answer any questions about her former employer or the end of her career there." (Nondisclosure clause in the settlement agreement?) But she talked at length about forced arbitration, a subject she will be testifying about at a Congressional hearing... Here's the profile... | | | "She'd love to go back on the air" | | | Time's Belinda Luscombe writes: "Carlson seems to be mulling where her voice is best used. She says she has received several unsolicited calls about TV jobs, and she'd love to go back on the air..." | | | WSJ offering buyouts to the whole newsroom | | Tom Kludt reports: The WSJ is seeking a "substantial number" of buyouts in an effort to "limit" layoffs, Gerard Baker wrote in a memo on Friday. Baker said that all news employees worldwide are eligible for an "enhanced voluntary severance benefit." The benefit, he said, is designed to "limit the number of involuntary layoffs."
The buyout package will be on the table til Halloween... | | | Elsewhere at Dow Jones... | | | More from Tom: Shortly after Baker's memo was sent out, employees received another email -- this one from the editor of Barron's, Ed Finn. "The email Gerry Baker just sent about wsj buyouts says that dj is offerings 1.5x the standard buyout package," Finn wrote in the email, according to media reports. "Are we planning to go to the employees we are laying off at Barron's next week and offer them 1x the standard package. That could create some problems. Please advise." Finn intended to forward his email to a select group of individuals, but instead wound up relaying the message to the entire WSJ newsroom... Read more... | | | Sunday's "Reliable" guest list | | | Dan Rather, Mollie Hemingway, Jane Hall, Matthew Dowd, and Dr. Gail Saltz will join me on Sunday morning... So join us, 11am ET, CNN... | | | Facebook's "newsworthiness" standard... | | Seth Fiegerman reports: Facebook is taking steps to avoid a repeat of last month's Napalm Girl controversy, while potentially opening itself up to a new headache. It plans to cut down censorship of offensive posts that may violate its community standards against nudity and violence -- that is, if those posts are deemed to be in the public interest.
Newsworthiness!
The announcement says: "In the weeks ahead, we're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest -- even if they might otherwise violate our standards..."
So WHO at Facebook will decide? HOW will they decide? The company says it will work "closely" with "publishers, journalists, photographers" and others "to do better when it comes to the kinds of items we allow." That is awfully vague...
-- Important: According to the WSJ, "Some of Donald Trump's Facebook posts set off debate inside the company" in the past year, "with some employees arguing the posts violated the site's rules on hate speech. CEO Mark Zuckerberg ruled they could stay..." | | | Facebook starting a marketing campaign for Live | | Samantha Murphy Kelly reports: Facebook is introducing a marketing campaign for Facebook Live complete with billboards and a series of TV spots...
-- p.s.: "Instagram appears to be testing live video," The Verge's Casey Newton says... | | | Brad Adgate tweets: "There have been 28 Presidential debates since 1980. All 3 of 2016 debates rank in the Top 10 of the most watched, including first and third..." | | | Trump's talking points about voter fraud | | | According to The Hill's Jonathan Swan, "Trump's campaign is encouraging its Republican Party surrogates to double down on the narrative that the presidential election is likely to be stolen by voter fraud... Urging allies who defend Trump on TV to sow doubts about vote counting in swing states." Details... | | | The year late night took a side | | | Editorials. Impressions. Spoofs. Late night hosts are pulling out all the stops to take Trump on, Frank Pallotta writes in this great recap (with lots of videos) of the past year... | | "We're the underdogs. But I know America loves a good underdog story."
--Kellyanne Conway to Erin Burnett on CNN Friday night... | | | Obama nominates Rick Stengel | | | Jeff Shell's term as the chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors has expired. On Friday the White House nominated Rick Stengel to succeed him. Stengel, a former editor of Time mag, is currently the State Department's Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Shell will continue to serve until Stengel is confirmed. John Lansing remains CEO of the BBG... | | | "The Simpsons" spoofs BuzzFeed | | | Sandra Gonzalez has an exclusive first look at Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons," which features a spoof of BuzzFeed, errr, BizzFad. The episode's title: "Trust But Clarify." It's hilarious... Check it out here... | | | Lowry's take on three new docs | | | Brian Lowry writes: It's a big weekend for documentaries, with about as varied a lineup as one could imagine. "Before the Flood," what amounts to Leonardo DiCaprio¹s decade-later follow-up to "An Inconvenient Truth," hits theaters, in advance of a National Geographic Channel airing; "Weiner," an extraordinary up-close look at Anthony Weiner's unraveling mayoral campaign, premieres on Showtime after its theatrical run; and "Rats," Morgan Spurlock's "horrormentary," will churn stomachs on Discovery Channel... | | | What I'm watching this weekend | | | "Black Mirror" season three. Assuming a DDoS attack doesn't stop me... | | -- Lisa France notes a big birthday: Kim Kardashian West very quietly turned 36 on Friday...
-- Kim and other "social media influencers" will be profiled this Sunday on "60 Minutes..."
-- Sandra Gonzalez emails: Donald Glover's now officially one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, right? Today he was cast as young Lando in the still-untitled standalone Han Solo "Star Wars" movie...
-- More from Lisa: Actress Shailene Woodley has written an essay about her arrest during a pipeline protest... | | From the NYT earlier this week: "A television review on Friday about the new Amazon series "Goliath" included an inaccurate discussion of the show's plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order."
The critic was Mike Hale. This correction actually ran earlier this week... But got a lot of attention on Friday after Mediaite and other sites wrote about it... Hale critiqued the "needlessly complicated structure of the initial episodes" due to the flip-flop... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email... And we'll be back Sunday... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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