Mergers, acquisitions, and the new media landscape

Author: 
Coverage Type: 

While much of the media remains focused on President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki, an eventful week for media companies has set in motion changes that may alter how Americans get their news. In the past several days, Disney has bested Comcast in the battle for 21st Century Fox, Sinclair’s takeover of Tribune Media was torpedoed by the Federal Communications Commission, and the Justice Department attempted to block the AT&T–Time Warner merger that is already underway. “In the media business, this past year has been something like the summer of ’68—a tumultuous, chaotic collision of personalities and companies,” Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo wrote. “It has felt like the vanishing of one world order, where consumers were reliant on a cable provider, and the emergence of a brave new one, where everything is accessed on the phone, and traditional players must join forces in a fight for survival against incipient challengers.” The race for scale has been driven, Pompeo notes, by the power of Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, along with the rise of Netflix, which this spring was the most valuable media company in the world. By consolidating media properties, Disney’s Bob Iger, Comcast’s Brian Roberts, and AT&T’s Randall Stephenson have cemented their positions of high influence.


Mergers, acquisitions, and the new media landscape