AT&T is approaching a joint venture between competing Warner Media and competing Discovery to create a $ 150bn worth of media, just a few years after the acquisition of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., people said. .
AT&T officials met on Sunday to ratify the agreement, said two people familiar with the matter. The agreement is expected to be announced in the coming days, the people said.
The merger includes one of Hollywood’s most important stages – launching the Warner Bros studios and television, HBO network and record media including CNN – and Discovery, which has been successful in a new cooking and cooking and non-scriptural cooking project. .
After years of watching Netflix dominate the flow, the world’s largest media and professional companies have stepped up their efforts. A year and a half ago, Disney, Apple, WarnerMedia, Comcast, Discovery and others set up promotional platforms as they fought for the future of entertainment.
The structure of the alliance is still unknown but AT&T, which has a market capitalization of about $ 230bn, is expected to control both organizations. The acquisition has a market value of $ 24bn.
AT&T’s idea to merge its distribution with Discovery comes five years after it agreed to take over Time Warner for $ 85.4bn while the telecommunications company wants to transform it into the world’s largest retail and distribution company.
In 2019, AT&T CEO John Stankey and Discovery CEO David Zaslav negotiated a merger of their programs to print about $ 8 a month (excluding HBO). But when Disney announced it would offer its largest Star Wars, Pstrong, Marvel and Disney warehouse for only $ 7 a month to Disney Plus, he abandoned the plan. Instead, Stankey teamed up with HBO and all other WarnerMedia programs to create a promotional program, called HBO Max, which launched in the US last year for $ 15 a month.
Discovery, the next HGTV company, Oprah Winfrey network and Eurosport broadcaster, in January launched $ 5 a month, which Zaslav told FT was “the most important new business” since joining the company more than a decade ago.
HBO Max and Discovery Plus have made entries in the racing competition. The acquisition in April said it had reached a 15m subscriber on its hunting business, with HBO Max signing about 3m subscribers in the first quarter, reaching a record high of 9.7m at the end of March.
However, both companies are battling the worst enemy: Netflix has 208m subscribers worldwide, while Disney Plus has attracted 104m subscribers in the one and a half years since its inception.
WarnerMedia plans to launch HBO Max in Latin America and other parts of Europe later this year.
Bloomberg began to discuss the negotiations between AT&T and Discovery. AT&T and Discovery declined to comment.
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