In an interview on FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Mornings w/Maria (weekdays, 6a-9a/ET), host Maria Bartiromo spoke Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav about the AT&T/Time Warner merger. Zaslav said, “content is going to be the ultimate winner here and for Time Warner to be getting a healthy price like this reinforces that the environment for content for the long term is going to be very important and needed for these pipes.”
David Zaslav on the AT&T/Time Warner merger:
“I think in some ways it’s expected, as you look around the world you see it much more in Latin America and in Europe. The cable operators first started offering broadband and the phone guys started offering broadband, but in the last year or two you’ve seen the quadruple play. You get your wireless, you multi-channel, your broadband, and your hard phone and it’s very compelling. The problem is that each of the distributors if they can offer all of those through a pipe, it effectively becomes a dumb pipe because you have a number of competitors where you can get wireless, your cable and your multi-channel and so, across Europe already and Latin America the distributors are buying content in order to de-commoditize that pipe that they’ve spent billions and billions on, so BT is buying ETL and Champions League, you’ve got SKY going out and buying Sports in order to de-commoditize their platform and so, there’s a bit of a race now for the infrastructure players to try and figure out, one, how do the cable guys have wireless and multi-channel and how do the wireless guys have cable and multi-channel? And second piece is they are going to need content in order to make their offering special and unique. I think it’s a reinforcement that great I.T. and content is going to be the ultimate winner here and for Time Warner to be getting a healthy price like this reinforces that the environment for content for the long term is going to be very important and needed for these pipes.”
