A federal judge ruled Tuesday that AT&T may purchase Time Warner, without any conditions, arguing that the $85 billion deal doesn’t violate antitrust law.
The six-week trial was a monumental win for corporate interests, likely clearing the way for other potential mergers like Disney and Fox, or T-Mobile and Sprint.
“A whole bunch of companies are all of a sudden going to get active,” Hal Vogel, CEO of Vogel Capital Management, told Fast Company. “The bankers have been romping around trying to figure out what they should do, if and when. Now that the decision is here, they’re going to move pretty quickly.”
AT&T argued that it needed Time Warner’s brands to survive in an increasingly competitive and consolidated media landscape.
“We look forward to closing the merger on or before June 20 so we can begin to give consumers video entertainment that is more affordable, mobile, and innovative,” AT&T General Counsel David McAtee said in a statement.
In November 2017, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to stop the merger, saying it would bring less competition and higher prices.
Source: Gizmodo
Judge Richard Leon disagreed on all counts.
“The Government has failed to meet its burden of proof to show that the merger is likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition,” he wrote in his ruling. “If there ever were an antitrust case where the parties had a dramatically different assessment of the current state of the relevant market and a fundamentally different vision of its future development, this is the one.”
The Justice Department’s top antitrust official, Makan Delrahim, said the government was considering “next steps.”
“We continue to believe that the pay-TV market will be less competitive and less innovative as a result of the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner,” he said in a statement.
The ruling is significant because it ostensibly sets a precedent on vertical mergers, defined as the combination of two companies that produce the same product but at different stages of the production process.
“It’s open season for vertical mergers,” Chris Sagers, an antitrust law professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, told CNN Money. “The fact is that they’ve gotten a little easier, and we’ll see a big flurry of deals.”
One way the deal could hurt consumers is if AT&T decided that only subscribers to its services can access Time Warner content, like HBO shows and DC films. That might help AT&T-Time Warner keep customers from cutting ties with cable and flocking to Netflix, which has been preparing for this moment for years by producing a cache of in-house content, but some argue it will give the conglomerate more power to raise prices on content without providing better service, and render smaller streaming services less competitive.
While the ruling has spurred media executives and analysts to look into other high-profile mergers, Judge Leon cautioned against considering it a decisive precedent.
“...the temptation by some to view this decision as being something more than a resolution of this specific case should be resisted by one and all!”
Here are the companies AT&T acquired in the merger:
- HBO and Cinemax, as part of Home Box Office Inc.
- TBS, truTV, TNT, Studio T, and TCM, as part of Turner Entertainment Networks
- Adult Swim and Cartoon Network, as part of the TBS, Inc. Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media (AYAKM) division
- CNN and HLN, as part of CNN News Group
- The websites Super Deluxe, Beme Inc., and CallToons
- DC Entertainment
- DC Films, including all of the “Batman” movies
- Turner Broadcasting International
- Turner Sports, including the website Bleacher Report and the rights to March Madness and NBA playoffs
- The CW (50%)
- Warner Bros. Animation
- Hanna-Barbera Cartoons
- Fandango Media (30%)
- Warner Bros. Consumer Products
- Warner Bros. Digital Networks
- Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures
- Warner Bros. Pictures International
- Warner Bros. Museum
- Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank
- Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden
- Warner Bros. Studio Tours
- Warner Bros. Pictures
- Warner Animation Group
- Warner Bros. Family Entertainment
- NonStop Television
- New Line Cinema
- Turner Entertainment Co.
- WaterTower Music
- Castle Rock Entertainment
- The Wolper Organization
- HOOQ
- Blue Ribbon Content
- Warner Bros. Television
- Warner Horizon Television
- Warner Bros. Television Distribution
- Warner Bros. International Television Production
- Telepictures
- Alloy Entertainment
- eleveneleven
- Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
- Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
AT&T had already controlled:
- Ameritech
- Ameritech Cellular
- Ameritech Interactive Media Services
- Ameritech Publishing
- AT&T Communications (2017)
- AT&T International
- AT&T Originals
- AT&T Alascom
- AT&T Business Internet
- AT&T CallVantage
- AT&T Computer Systems
- AT&T FSM Library
- AT&T GoPhone
- AT&T Information Systems
- AT&T Intellectual Property
- AT&T Intellectual Property I
- AT&T Labs
- AT&T Mexico
- AT&T Mobility
- AT&T Technologies
- AT&T Wireless Services
- BellSouth
- BellSouth Advertising & Publishing
- BellSouth Long Distance
- BellSouth Mobility DCS
- BellSouth Telecommunications
- Centennial Communications
- CenturyTel of the Midwest-Kendall
- Cricket Wireless
- Crunchyroll
- DirecTV
- Fullscreen (company)
- Illinois Bell
- Indiana Bell
- International Bell Telephone Company
- Michigan Bell
- Nevada Bell
- Ohio Bell
- Otter Media
- Pacific Bell
- Pacific Bell Directory
- Pacific Bell Wireless
- QLT Consumer Lease Services
- Rooster Teeth
- SBC Long Distance
- SBC Telecom
- Southwestern Bell
- Southwestern Bell Internet Services
- Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems
- Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages
- Unefón
- Univel
- Unix System Laboratories
- AT&T U-verse
- Wisconsin Bell
- Yellowpages.com
- YP Holdings
- The jaw bones of an 8-million-year-old ape were discovered at Nikiti, Greece, in the '90s.
- Researchers speculate it could be a previously unknown species and one of humanity's earliest evolutionary ancestors.
- These fossils may change how we view the evolution of our species.
Homo sapiens have been on earth for 200,000 years — give or take a few ten-thousand-year stretches. Much of that time is shrouded in the fog of prehistory. What we do know has been pieced together by deciphering the fossil record through the principles of evolutionary theory. Yet new discoveries contain the potential to refashion that knowledge and lead scientists to new, previously unconsidered conclusions.
A set of 8-million-year-old teeth may have done just that. Researchers recently inspected the upper and lower jaw of an ancient European ape. Their conclusions suggest that humanity's forebearers may have arisen in Europe before migrating to Africa, potentially upending a scientific consensus that has stood since Darwin's day.
Rethinking humanity's origin story
The frontispiece of Thomas Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863) sketched by natural history artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
As reported in New Scientist, the 8- to 9-million-year-old hominin jaw bones were found at Nikiti, northern Greece, in the '90s. Scientists originally pegged the chompers as belonging to a member of Ouranopithecus, an genus of extinct Eurasian ape.
David Begun, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, and his team recently reexamined the jaw bones. They argue that the original identification was incorrect. Based on the fossil's hominin-like canines and premolar roots, they identify that the ape belongs to a previously unknown proto-hominin.
The researchers hypothesize that these proto-hominins were the evolutionary ancestors of another European great ape Graecopithecus, which the same team tentatively identified as an early hominin in 2017. Graecopithecus lived in south-east Europe 7.2 million years ago. If the premise is correct, these hominins would have migrated to Africa 7 million years ago, after undergoing much of their evolutionary development in Europe.
Begun points out that south-east Europe was once occupied by the ancestors of animals like the giraffe and rhino, too. "It's widely agreed that this was the found fauna of most of what we see in Africa today," he told New Scientists. "If the antelopes and giraffes could get into Africa 7 million years ago, why not the apes?"
He recently outlined this idea at a conference of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
It's worth noting that Begun has made similar hypotheses before. Writing for the Journal of Human Evolution in 2002, Begun and Elmar Heizmann of the Natural history Museum of Stuttgart discussed a great ape fossil found in Germany that they argued could be the ancestor (broadly speaking) of all living great apes and humans.
"Found in Germany 20 years ago, this specimen is about 16.5 million years old, some 1.5 million years older than similar species from East Africa," Begun said in a statement then. "It suggests that the great ape and human lineage first appeared in Eurasia and not Africa."
Migrating out of Africa
In the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin proposed that hominins descended out of Africa. Considering the relatively few fossils available at the time, it is a testament to Darwin's astuteness that his hypothesis remains the leading theory.
Since Darwin's time, we have unearthed many more fossils and discovered new evidence in genetics. As such, our African-origin story has undergone many updates and revisions since 1871. Today, it has splintered into two theories: the "out of Africa" theory and the "multi-regional" theory.
The out of Africa theory suggests that the cradle of all humanity was Africa. Homo sapiens evolved exclusively and recently on that continent. At some point in prehistory, our ancestors migrated from Africa to Eurasia and replaced other subspecies of the genus Homo, such as Neanderthals. This is the dominant theory among scientists, and current evidence seems to support it best — though, say that in some circles and be prepared for a late-night debate that goes well past last call.
The multi-regional theory suggests that humans evolved in parallel across various regions. According to this model, the hominins Homo erectus left Africa to settle across Eurasia and (maybe) Australia. These disparate populations eventually evolved into modern humans thanks to a helping dollop of gene flow.
Of course, there are the broad strokes of very nuanced models, and we're leaving a lot of discussion out. There is, for example, a debate as to whether African Homo erectus fossils should be considered alongside Asian ones or should be labeled as a different subspecies, Homo ergaster.
Proponents of the out-of-Africa model aren't sure whether non-African humans descended from a single migration out of Africa or at least two major waves of migration followed by a lot of interbreeding.
Did we head east or south of Eden?
Not all anthropologists agree with Begun and his team's conclusions. As noted by New Scientist, it is possible that the Nikiti ape is not related to hominins at all. It may have evolved similar features independently, developing teeth to eat similar foods or chew in a similar manner as early hominins.
Ultimately, Nikiti ape alone doesn't offer enough evidence to upend the out of Africa model, which is supported by a more robust fossil record and DNA evidence. But additional evidence may be uncovered to lend further credence to Begun's hypothesis or lead us to yet unconsidered ideas about humanity's evolution.
