AT&T Hangs Up on WarnerMedia

AT&T’s agreement to sell WarnerMedia to Discovery ends the telecom firm’s six-year dalliance with the entertainment industry, which as expected turned out to be an egregious waste of shareholder money and management attention. Including its DirecTV acquisition, AT&T spent $126 billion and assumed billions of dollars more in debt on two deals that will go down in the history of corporate America as among the most ill-conceived pair of acquisitions ever. And don’t listen to any AT&T executives who claimed the industry changed faster than they expected: Evidence was abundant six years ago that cord-cutting was eroding both satellite TV and entertainment. 

AT&T even had plenty of time to back out of the Warner purchase, given that the deal’s closing was delayed while the Justice Department sued to block it. (It will be fascinating to see if the same antitrust regulators who tried everything to block AT&T’s purchase of what is now called WarnerMedia now attempt to block its unwinding.)