Los Angeles
Time Warner Inc is no more.
Late Thursday, AT&T Inc announced that it completed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc, just two days after a federal judge in Washington gave the deal the green light. AT&T wasted little time consolidating its hard-fought prize _ a blockbuster purchase that instantly transforms the phone company into a major force in Hollywood.
Television networks HBO, TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and the Warner Bros. movie and television studio, based in Burbank, now have a new boss: John Stankey. The 55-year-old executive is a Los Angeles native and a 32-year veteran of AT&T and its predecessors.
Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes will serve as a senior adviser to Stankey and AT&T during the transition.
“All of Jeff Bewkes’ direct reports will now report to John Stankey,” AT&T said in its statement.
AT&T and Time Warner have spent the last six months battling the Justice Department to gain its approval for the deal. The Justice Department sued in November, alleging that AT&T would use Time Warner’s content to put its rivals at a disadvantage.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Richard Leon ruled against the government, saying it had failed to prove its case that the AT&T-Time Warner combination was anticompetitive.
AT&T will separate its business into four distinct units: communications, which encompasses mobile phone service, broadband internet and DirecTV; advertising and analytics; international operations; and now the Time Warner properties, which last year generated $31 billion in revenue.
“We offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first entertainment experience,” Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive of AT&T, said in a statement. “We’re going to bring a fresh approach to how the media and entertainment industry works for consumers, content creators, distributors and advertisers.”
Time Warner was formed by the 1990 merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc, the magazine empire. In 1996, it bought Turner Broadcasting. At one point, the company was one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world, churning out popular movies, 24-hour newscasts and such popular magazines as Time, People and Sports Illustrated.
It also orchestrated one of the worst mergers ever: Time Warner’s $165-billion sale in 2000 to AOL, the dial-up internet pioneer. A few months after the deal was finalised, the dot-com bubble burst and the company’s value plummeted.
The company’s roots date to 1923, when Polish immigrant brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner incorporated their pioneering film business in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. remains one of the industry’s jewels with such film franchises as “Wonder Woman” and “Harry Potter” and television shows such as “The Big Bang Theory.”
Separately, the first copy of Time magazine was published in 1923 and sold 9,000 copies. Time’s founders, Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, thought there would be a market among the college-educated crowd. But the digital era has not been kind to magazines, and Time Warner four years ago spun off the titles.
AT&T in its statement said it would announce a new name for the Time Warner unit later.
Earlier on Thursday, AT&T negotiated a settlement with the Justice Department to waive a waiting period for the closing, according to Bloomberg News. AT&T closed the deal about three hours later. AT&T was pushing to complete the transaction before a June 21 deadline, when its Time Warner merger agreement was due to expire.
AT&T’s Stankey was raised in Los Angeles. His father was an insurance underwriter and his mom stayed home to care for their three kids.
Stankey, the youngest, attended Loyola Marymount University in the early 1980s, finishing with a degree in finance. He earned spending money by stringing tennis rackets at the now-defunct Oshman’s Sporting Goods near Pico and Sepulveda boulevards. Later, he worked as a buyer for the store, purchasing tennis rackets and skis.
He went to work in 1985 for the phone company Pacific Bell and never left. He earned his MBA from UCLA in 1991, and went on to tackle increasingly complex assignments on a determined march up the management ranks at Pacific Bell and SBC Communications, which in 2005 acquired AT&T. He served as chief information officer, chief technology officer and, beginning in 2012, AT&T’s chief of strategy.
Last summer, he was designated the new boss of HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. _ but he had to wait nearly a year to take over his new turf because of the battle with the Justice Department.
— Los Angeles Times
