WarnerMedia declared last Wednesday at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit that the first product coming out of their merger with AT&T is a new on-demand streaming service.
WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey confirmed in an on-stage interview that the new service would be subscription-based and arrive in the fourth quarter of 2019. “We are committed to launching a compelling and competitive product that will serve as a complement to our existing businesses.” Stankey went on to add that this advancement will, “help us to expand our reach by offering a new choice for entertainment with the WarnerMedia collection of films, television series, documentaries and animation.” Currently Time Warner owns several media brands like CNN and TBS as well as entertainment properties such as “Harry Potter” and “Batman”.
The new acquisition will be added to the growing library of streaming products that both AT&T and Time Warner currently offer. AT&T’s operations include live-tv services such as DirecTV Now and the cheaper alternative WatchTV. HBO NOW and HBO GO were the new streaming platforms gained from Time Warner’s merger, with the former being offered to those without a cable subscription and the latter for those who have an active cable package.
Ball State Telecommunications professor Dom Caristi shared his insights about how consumers may be affected by the new service. “It might be more profitable for AT&T to cluster certain packages…to say, ‘We have an incredible library of content that we can make available, and we can make that available this way,’” said Caristi. “Then separate from that, we can provide a different streaming service for different purposes…it might be a viable way of doing it.”
Important details Stankey did not mention, however, were pricing and specific titles that would be included in the platform. Professor Caristi commented, “They are still figuring this out as they go along. I wouldn’t be surprised to know that AT&T executives don’t even know some of the assets that they have.” With each new business venture though, there is a chance of failure. When asked about the possibility of Time Warner and AT&T’s first big move as one company going under, Mr. Caristi pointed out, “Obviously if it does tank, they will lose money, and the stockholders will take a little bit of a hit, but it is a big company with deep pockets….” On the contrary, with the rise of streaming services the probability of success is still very high.
Source: Tech Crunch
Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons
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