Nipping in the Bud Any Reassessment of Merger Guidelines

             The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have released for public comment proposed new guidelines designed to address "the many ways mergers can weaken competition, harming consumers, workers, and businesses." See https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/07/ftc-doj-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines. Rather than participate in a thorough debate on the merits of the new government guidelines, a variety of stakeholders have launched a preemptive strike to discredit the inquiry and individuals like FTC chairwoman Lina M. Khan. 

             Sponsored researchers, Chicago School antitrust doctrine advocates, and maybe some true believers in the virtues of maintaining the status quo have become apoplectic in their disapproval, some preemptively oppositional even before release of the proposal. See e.g., https://www.uschamber.com/finance/antitrust/a-shift-in-merger-enforcement-risks-damaging-our-economy; https://cei.org/studies/turning-back-the-clock-structural-presumptions-in-merger-analyses-and-revised-merger-guidelines/.

             Using a commonsense standard, I smell a rat.  Advocates for maintaining the status quo have much to lose if DOJ, FTC, and eventually, reviewing courts, respond to changing marketplace conditions such as the proliferation of "winner take all" platform intermediaries, like Facebook and Google.  Information Age markets do not always match the manner in which bricks and mortar markets operate.  See Rob Frieden, The Internet of Platforms and Two-Sided Markets: Implications for Competition and Consumers, 63 Vill. L. Rev. 269 (2018); https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol63/iss2/3/; Two-Sided Internet Markets and the Need to Assess Both Upstream and Downstream Impacts, 68 Am. U. L. Rev. 713 (2019); https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2085&context=aulr. Nevertheless, stakeholders tenaciously adhere to doctrine, rules, laws, and assumptions that surely need reassessment in light of changed circumstances.

             Here are a few significant new challenges to the status quo.

1) Chicago School emphasis on consumer welfare and price ignores harmful secondary and tertiary impacts.

             It does not take a Ph. D in economics to see financial and reputational harms resulting from mergers and acquisitions that further concentrate markets. Even using monetary impact as the sole evaluative criterion, market dominance makes it possible for firms to extract monopoly rents.  Chicago School advocates note how firms like Facebook and Goggle and offer a valuable service "for free." Using their narrow focus, free represents a remarkable value proposition. However, a broader focus on economic impact readily identifies offsetting harms: identity theft, insufficient data protection resulting in stolen email addresses and passwords, disinformation leading to distrust in government, media, organized religion, and other bedrock institutions, threats to elections, national security, and individuals' overall sense of wellbeing, etc.

             Free does not mean without cost, particularly in an ecosystem where "surveillance capitalism" offers a "free" service as an inducement for the opportunity to mine, collate, market, and generate revenues from data.

2) Vertical and horizontal mergers are not necessarily separate transactions.

             Conventional antitrust theory, subsequently baked into case precedent and current DOJ-FTC merger guidelines, considers as gospel truth the mutual exclusivity of vertical and horizontal mergers.  The former qualifies for relaxed scrutiny based on the assumption that the acquiring firm did not compete in the markets served by the acquired firm.  The rationale concludes that no harm will beset consumers in a merger of firms that did not compete with each other in the first place.  Because horizontal mergers involve the elimination of a competitor and expanded market share for the acquiring firm, closer scrutiny should apply.

             There are several grave problems with this convenient and simplistic doctrinal model.  Many markets, especially information, communications, and entertainment ("ICE") ones, have dominant firms that operate throughout vertical and horizontal "food chains."  For example, Comcast creates content (NBC Universal), syndicates and licenses content for distribution by unaffiliated firms, and also delivers content to consumers (cable, broadcasting, streaming).  The company is vertically integrated and horizontally integrated.  It competes with companies that also have to pay it for access to "must see" content, e.g., NBC as a broadcast network still offering mass market programming such as network news and live sporting events.

             If courts did not assume vertical acquisitions lack any adverse impact on markets and consumers, a vertical acquisition might get the kind of close scrutiny it warrants.  Consider Comcast's acquisition of NBC.  The conventional wisdom framed the deal as vertical integration, because Comcast mostly distributes content as a cable television operator, with seemingly limited investment in content creation.  Even accepting the obvious that Comcast does create content, reviewing courts assumed the company would never withhold access, because it would reduce licensing and syndication revenues.

             News flash: Comcast might want to withhold content, or extract higher payments from competitors.  So-called retransmission consent requires Comcast, as the owner of NBC to negotiate in good faith with unaffiliated cable television companies.  Frequently, the parties cannot reach a renewal agreement on time and valuable content is blocked.  These "black outs" have become more numerous and last longer.  See, Rob Frieden, Krishna Jayakar, & Eun-A Park, There’s Probably a Blackout in Your Television Future: Tracking New Carriage Negotiation Strategies Between Video Content Programmers and Distributors, 43 Colum. J.L. & Arts 487 (2020);  https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-aq85-2z51/download.

3) Mergers rarely enhance competition.

             Has anyone empirically proven that a merger or acquisition enhances consumer welfare rather than just the acquiring company's profitability?  Does reducing the number of competitors somehow make the survivors more vigorous competitors, keen on innovating, reducing prices, improving customer service, and otherwise making the marketplace more robust?

             Consider TMobile's acquisition of Sprint.  The conventional wisdom, dutifully articulated in the court's approval of the transaction (see https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv05434/517350/409/) assumed New TMobile would continue the tradition of being an innovator, lower cost competitor, and provocative pro-consumer warrior.  I see the wireless marketplace as an oligopoly of three offering roughly the same prices, happy to differentiate themselves on what "free" content like Netflix they will provide subscribers. Has New TMobile offered anything innovative and disruptive since acquiring Sprint?

             I readily acknowledge that Sprint had become a failing venture, perhaps on the brink of bankruptcy.  If an incumbent had not acquired the firm, I believe a new investor gladly would have paid pennies on the dollar for the opportunity to operate in a market with one of the highest average revenue per user in the world.  Yes, wireless rates have declined, but they are lower with better terms throughout most of the world.

4) Platform intermediaries, operating in two-sided markets, can adversely impact horizontal, vertical, secondary, and tertiary markets.

             Chicago School antirust doctrine provides simplistic, but easily understood and implemented rules. Judges and their law clerks, have become indoctrinated in "rules" that started as theory, but over time got baked into the jurisprudence.  I believe the Chicago School doctrine became unimpeachable gospel largely because stakeholders that would benefit from relaxed antitrust enforcement, invested heavily in making it a fundamental part of law and economics.

             How did this happen?  Millions of dollars spent over decades have made the doctrine appear legitimate and unimpeachable, despite regularly failing a simple smell test.  The combination of sponsored researchers, well-funded institutes, foundations, think tanks, and advocacy groups, all-expense paid seminars, endowed professorships, and the like have paid off.  Sponsored researchers create a plethora of work, framed as academic contributions, but designed to achieve support for a predetermined outcome. The process continues and builds on itself as sponsored researchers cite the prior work of sponsored researchers.  Over time, clearly results driven advocacy documents acquire the legitimacy and credibility of unsponsored work aiming to seek the truth.  In fact, sponsored research can crowd out work that does not have the public outreach and cheerleading provided by stakeholders.

             The whole process "stinks to high heaven."  Just now, sponsored researchers are noting that the proposed merger guidelines would harm the credibility of both DoJ and FTC, apparently before the court of public opinion and judges.  Of course, these very same pundits have the financial incentive to impeach the credibility of these government agencies and deem the proposed guidelines harmful, ill conceived, and bullying.

             It's a racket as my wife would say.  I am certain that so-called consumer stakeholders also have financial underwriters singing the praises of the proposed guidelines. However, these groups have substantially less funding available, because few stakeholders can see the direct monetary harm that would result from implementation of the guidelines.

             I understand that sponsored researchers often have the ongoing financial burden of having to generate annually enough "soft money" to keep graduate students employed. Sadly, that necessity has become yet another reason for the rats to proliferate.  

 

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Affirms Lower Court Approval of AT&T-Time Warner Merger

            The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s unconditional approval of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. [1]  The appellate court opted not to second-guess the lower court’s findings that dismissed, ignored or misinterpreted the government’s evidence and the findings of its expert witnesses.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the lower court’s near complete embrace of the findings by AT&T’s expert witnesses who purported to show that the vertical combination of AT&T and Time Warner would have no impact on content prices and create no increased ability for key content outlets, such as CNN and HBO, to demand higher compensation and weather longer blackout period of no compensation to extract better terms. 

            The appellate court also emphasized the offer by Time Warner to accept a seven year period of binding arbitration and to maintain current compensation arrangements instead of withholding content.  Additionally, the court appeared to agree that having alternative sources of “must see” video content, such as DirecTV and Uverse, did not create significantly greater incentives for AT&T to drive a hard bargain with video programming distributors, such as cable operators, knowing that during an extended black out period, disgruntled subscribers could migrate to AT&T-owned options.

            The D.C. Circuit accepted the lower court’s emphasis on “real world” empirical analysis whether a vertically integrated firm would have greater incentives to raise the cost of content to competitors.  Even though AT&T itself had made this assertion in pleadings before the FCC, [2] its expert witness attempted to show that the merger of Comcast with NBC Universal did not trigger increased content costs.  In a battle between conflicting expert witness testimony, the lower court’s preference for AT&T’s expert was not challenged perhaps based on the sense that it was based on real world circumstances while the government’s expert used economic bargaining theory. [3] 

            The D.C. Circuit credits the lower court for accepting the premise that vertically integrated firms could change bargaining tactics, but in this particular situation changed incentives and perception of leveraging power would not end up altering the outcome of content price negotiations. [4]  The appellate court did not question the lower court’s conclusion that even if the merged corporation would have greater resources to survive the loss of revenues during a blackout and even though it could offset losses from subscriber migration to AT&T content options, AT&T would have little more incentive to risk longer and more frequent black outs:

The district court’s statements identified by the government, then, do not indicate that the district court misunderstood or misapplied the Nash bargaining theory but rather, upon considering whether in the context of a dynamic market where a similar merger had not resulted in a “statistically significant increase in content costs,” the district court concluded that the theory inaccurately predicted the postmerger increase in content costs during affiliate negotiations. [5]

             The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that in:

finding the government failed to ‘prov[e] that Turner [Broadcasting]’s post-merger negotiating position would materially increase based on its ownership by AT&T,’ . . .  the district court reached a fact-specific conclusion based on real-world evidence that, contrary to the Nash bargaining theory and government expert opinion on increased content costs, the post-merger cost of a long-term blackout would not sufficiently change to enable Turner Broadcasting to secure higher affiliate fees. [6]

            The appellate court also gave short thrift to the lower court’s assumption that AT&T would pass through all of the $352 million in program cost saving to its customers.  While the D.C. Circuit acknowledged that not all savings would flow through to consumers, as the lower court mistakenly assumed, the court returned to its point of emphasis: that the merger would not trigger content cost increases borne by other video program distributors that they would have passed through to consumers:

The district court accepted Professor Shapiro’s testimony about the $352 million cost savings from the merger. . . . [T]he district court found that the quantitative model as presented through Professor Shapiro’s opinion testimony did not provide an adequate basis to conclude that the merger will lead to “any” raised costs for distributors or consumers, “much less consumer harms that outweigh the conceded $350 million in annual cost savings to AT&T’s customers.”

Whatever errors the district court may have made in evaluating the inputs for Professor Shapiro’s quantitative model, the model did not take into account long-term contracts, which would constrain Turner Broadcasting’s ability to raise content prices for distributors. . . .[7]

            The appellate court notes that the district court did not conduct a costs benefit analysis balancing “increased prices for consumers against cost savings for consumers” [8] and instead found that the government had not shown the merger was likely to lead to any price increases, because Time Warner content negotiators would not have, or use increased leverage in affiliate negotiations after the merger.

---

[1]              U.S. v. AT&T Inc., No. 18-5214, slip op.  (D.C. Cir. Feb. 26, 2019); available at: https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/390E66D6D58F426B852583AD00546ED6/$file/18-5214.pdf.

[2]              The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the lower court’s disinclination to consider such evidence as significant now: “Once the district court credited AT&T’s expert’s opinion based on an econometric analysis that the similar Comcast-NBCU merger had not had a ‘statistically significant effect on content costs,’ . . . the district court could understand that the defendants’ admissions at the time of the Comcast-NBCU merger offered little probative support for the government’s increased leverage theory.” Id. at 25.

[3]              “At this point, however, the issue is whether the district court clearly erred in

finding that the government failed to clear the first hurdle in meeting its burden of showing that the proposed merger is likely to increase Turner Broadcasting’s bargaining leverage.” Id. at 17-18.

[4]              “In other words, the record shows that the district court accepted the Nash bargaining theory as an economic principle generally but rejected its specific prediction in light of the

evidence that the district court credited.” Id. at 19.

[5]              Id. at 21.

[6]              Id. at 22.

[7]              Id. at 32.

[8]              Id. at 33.

What the Justice Department Got Wrong in Opposing the AT&T –Time Warner Merger

            In a previous post, I offered insights on grievous flaws in the court decision rejecting the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) opposition to AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.  See http://telefrieden.blogspot.com/2018/06/grievous-defects-in-at-warner-court.html  This post will address problems with DOJ’s strategy.

            Both Judge Leon and DOJ largely ignored the impact of market and technological convergence that makes it all but impossible to frame a merger with a completely vertical or completely horizontal designation.  These two types of mergers trigger vastly different assumptions including the view that horizontal mergers require far greater scrutiny based on the comparatively greater potential for harm to competition than vertical transactions among assumed non-competitors.

            Convergence makes the vertical vs. horizontal dichotomy unsustainable.  Even before acquiring Time Warner, AT&T was in the content business in a BIG, BIG way as a content aggregator.  Content aggregators are to content creators as wireless resellers are to facilities-based wireless carriers.  Of course, AT&T was and remains a content purchaser, but it was and remains a content packager fully participating in and affecting the supply and cost of content to consumers.

            Courts have identified conditional First Amendment rights in content packaging and curation (Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 636 (1994) (“There can be no disagreement on an initial premise: Cable programmers and cable operators engage in and

transmit speech, and they are entitled to the protection of the speech and press provisions

of the First Amendment.”) (see also Rob Frieden, Invoking And Avoiding The First Amendment: How Internet Service Providers Leverage Their Status as Both Content Creators and Neutral Conduits, 12 U.PA. J. CONST. L. 1279 (2010); available at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=jcl.

            Even before its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T operated as a content speaker, through its content aggregation, curation and tiering.  The company seamlessly integrated this content-based function with its content carriage function.  In this convergent time, it made no sense for DoJ to concentrate almost exclusively on AT&T’s upstream activities, as content seller.  By doing so, DoJ made it possible for Judge Leon to embrace the incorrect assumption that the merger would eliminate $352 million in content markup revenues that AT&T would not incur and which the Judge wrongly assumed would completely flow through to consumers.

            DoJ’s second major mistake was to emphasize what AT&T probably would do now that it became fully integrated, i.e., price discriminate by charging downstream competitors higher content prices.  AT&T is far too sophisticated and clever to use such a blunt and readily detected anticompetitive strategy.

            What AT&T can and already has begun to do is strategically exploiting its market dominance, particularly in downstream delivery of content to consumers.  It appears that DoJ did not emphasize that AT&T shares a near duopoly in the ever more important wireless marketplace along with a significant market share in wireline delivery of content. 

            The FCC’s decision to abandon all regulatory safeguards addressing the downstream delivery of content means that AT&T has free reign to use content tiering as a powerful weapon, potentially quite harmful to both consumers and competition.  It starts with seemingly benign, if not consumer friendly, zero rating of content and proliferating bundles of content.  Because consumers love the concept of “free,” even when it isn’t, AT&T can upsell consumers, or at least prevent them from cord shaving with strategic placement of most desired (what some would term “must see”) content.  That’s how DirecTV streams for free now, but only to AT&T subscribers of both wireless and DirecTV. 

            Some of the $352 million in reduced overhead payments will flow through to consumers, particularly those maintaining or increasing their monthly payments to AT&T.  The real harm from the merger with Time Warner lies in the extraction of more revenues by AT&T simply with strategies that reduce, or eliminate consumer surplus. 

            Even as it appears to offer skinny and low cost, small bundles of content, look for AT&T to migrate the “good stuff” to higher and more expensive programming tiers.  AT&T can justify the higher fees and higher tier placement by claiming that even it has to recoup the ever higher program creation costs of its stars, HBO and CNN.  What will be framed as consumer friendly bundling of content masks a strategy of increasing Average Revenue Per User and raising both content licensing fees and subscriber out of pocket costs.

           

            Depending on your political and economic philosophy, that’s smart business strategy, or anticompetitive behavior.  The former emphasizes the need for size and scale to offer one-stop shopping and a competitive response to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.  The latter emphasizes how much undetectable downstream content meddling AT&T can execute, particularly now that network neutrality safeguards have evaporated.  Bear in mind we still don’t know who or what caused Comcast’s network congestion that slowed and Netflix traffic in 2015.  We do know what the problem ended overnight when Netflix blinked first and agreed to a paid peering arrangement with Comcast.

            Lastly, not forget, long ago, Time Warner vertically integrated with AOL with disastrous consequences.  This time, it might be different, because the marketplace has become far more concentrated, particularly on the downstream side.

Grievous Defects in the AT&T-Time Warner Court Decision

            A preliminary reading of the District Court decision (available at: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/17-2511opinion.pdf leaves me with despair and several unanswered questions.  I am not an antitrust law expert, nor do I have a Ph.D. in antitrust economics.  On the other hand, I offer unsponsored, non-doctrinal common sense.

            The Judge places great emphasis on the pro-consumer benefits of a vertical merger.  On several occasions, he states that the merger will accrue $352 million in cost savings to the combined company (p. 67) now able to eliminate one of two content price markups: 1) Time Warner’s profit margin in licensing content to AT&T as content distributor and 2) AT&T’s profit margin in delivering content to subscribers.  Economists term this benefit the Elimination of Double Marginalization (“EDM”).

            This makes sense intuitively, but specifically as to the video entertainment market, how much—if any-- of this $352 million flows downstream to cable/DBS subscribers?  This is a question for which empirical data does exist.  The Judge excoriates the Justice Department and its expert witnesses for failing to provide conclusive and persuasive evidence of consumer harm, largely because it has to be predictive.  But insofar as the flow through of vertical integration’s efficiency gains and EDM, empirical evidence provides a clear answer.

            Year after year, the FCC’s reports that video content prices rise, well in excess of a broader measure of consumer prices. See Implementation of Section 3 of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, Statistical Report on Average Rates for Basic Service, Cable Programming Service, and Equipment, MM Docket No. 92-266, Report On Cable Industry Prices (rel. Feb. 8, 2018),; available at https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-18-128A1.docx.  Over the five years ending January 1, 2016, the price of expanded basic service rose, on average, by 4.4% percent annually with the average price per channel (price divided by the number of channels offered with expanded basic service) increasing 2.1% percent to 47 cents per channel, even with the proliferation of unwanted channels in an enhanced basic programming tier.  The FCC again reported the anomalous statistic that monthly rates in communities, deemed not to have effective competition, had service rates below those charged in locales meeting an effective competition test.  The Commission reported that cable operators have substantially increased charges to recoup broadcast signal retransmission costs with a 33.9% percent rise from 2014 to 2015.  So much for robust competition.

            Let’s consider a previous blockbuster vertical merger: Comcast’s acquisition of NBC-Universal.  Did Comcast reduce its rates to reflect EDM and operational synergies?  More broadly, why hasn’t Comcast reduced its rates in response to cord shaving, cord cutting and significantly greater churn?

            The Judge mistakenly assumes that the combined AT&T-Time Warner will pass through at some—if not all (see p. 69)-- of the EDM savings, but Comcast did not do so after it acquired access to a large inventory of cable networks.  Simply put, the Judge erred in thinking that the AT&T-Time Warner acquisition financially benefits consumers in a speedy and measurable way.  When pressed to identify consumer benefits of NBC-Universal acquisition, Comcast senior managers admitted that cost savings and rate reductions for subscribers were not likely.

            The Judge also did not accept any element of the Government’s assertion that a combined AT&T-Time Warner would have heightened negotiation leverage with competing content aggregators and distributors.  Again, common sense and empirical evidence challenge his confident—bordering on arrogant—conclusions.

            Just look historically at the content licensing process and identify who blinks first in the negotiation process, particularly when a blackout has occurred.  Time after time, content distributors cave, largely as “must see” television appears on the horizon.  No DBS or cable operator will hang tough once the NFL regular season starts.  Content providers have the upper hand in negotiations and who among us will pay $50 a month for a package of channels lacking CNN, TBS, TNT and other Time Warner networks?

            There are several instances where vertically integrated ventures evidence self-serving, anticompetitive behavior.  Consider this example: Comcast inserted its wholly owned Golf Channel in the enhanced basic programming tier, but relegated the unaffiliated Tennis Channel to a most expensive sport tier.   The FCC’s Administrative Law Judge determined that Comcast’s tiering decision was motivated in part by a strategy to harm a competitor.  On appeal to the FCC Commissioners, the decision was reversed.  One can readily smell a rat here, but even without politics and partisanship, the FCC staff would have been hard pressed to prove anticompetitive intent.  There always plausible deniability—that Comcast determined its subscribers like golf more than tennis, or any of a number of plausibly legitimate business motivations.

            Let us also consider a scenario where AT&T does not use its leverage, or does not have the upper hand.   Content carriage fees will increase, probably well in excess of a general measure of consumer prices.  Some non-AT&T video content subscribers will consider reducing or eliminating their cable/DBS monthly rates.  They will seek the alternatives including AT&T’s U-verse and DirecTV as well as the options the company offers via its broadband wireless, cellular radio service and “over the top” options available to broadband wired subscribers.  A significant percentage of churning video subscribers will migrate to an AT&T option, so in at least some scenarios AT&T enjoys a “win-win” proposition: 1) it can maintain or raise profit margins for still loyal subscribers and 2) it can capture new market share with churning subscribers of competitors who do not want to pay higher rates, even if they do not reflect greater AT&T leverage, post-merger.

            I’ll stop for the time being with a prediction: consumer video content costs will rise well in excess of general inflation measures and this decision will lead to an even more concentrated industry having less incentives to enhance consumer welfare and compete on price.

           

Legacy Antitrust Models Have Legs in the Internet Ecosystem: AT&T’s Acquisition of Time Warner

            A day after the FCC’s termination of network neutrality rules, District Court Judge Richard J. Leon will announce the verdict in the Justice Department’s suit against AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.  See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/att-time-warner-ruling.html.  I’m betting the Judge will apply “old school” competition policy analysis finding no significant harm in this $85 billion deal that he will frame as vertical integration among non-competitors.  This ruling will lead to even more industry consolidation always framed as necessary to achieve scale, efficient operations and effective competition. We have not heard much about how these acquisitions offer consumer benefits, apparently because advocates do not have to bother telling us.

            Using the perspective of Chicago School economists, vertical mergers and acquisitions trigger limited concern about harm to competition and consumers while horizontal deals eliminate a competitor and further concentrate a market.  The prevailing wisdom assumes vertical integration can achieve benefits for the merging parties without offsetting harms to consumers largely because judges assume the two merger-aspiring ventures do not compete in the same market segments.

            In the Information, Communications and Entertainment (“ICE”) markets, deep-pocketed ventures operate throughout the marketplace with extensive vertical and horizontal integration.  It makes no sense to assume any ICE venture involving major incumbents, such as AT&T and Time Warner, operate in mutually exclusive market segments.  Decision makers do not seem willing, or able to understand that the Internet ecosystem seamlessly combines conduit and content and the ICE marketplace has fully integrated converging markets and technologies.

            Consider the conditionally approved acquisition of NBC-Universal by Comcast in 2011.  Even then, Comcast operated extensively in both content creation and content delivery.  It made no sense to consider the deal as solely occurring in a vertical “food chain” with Comcast a downstream distributor of content created mostly by unaffiliated ventures such as NBC.  In 2011, Comcast had 100% ownership interests in content networks including E!, Golf Channel Versus, G4, and dozens of regional sports networks, with minority interests in dozens of other networks.  See https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-11-4A1.pdf at p. 177.

            It seems that competition policy models do not easily lose traction after having made the transition from academic theory, to preferred model by stakeholders, to conventional wisdom. For example, the Chicago School and now case precedent hold that no venture would ever deliberately underprice a good or service for any period of time beyond a blockbuster sale, e.g., the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”).  The prevailing wisdom concludes that the underpricing company would have no good likelihood for recouping its losses, particularly in competitive markets that would foreclose gouging.  How then can judges and academics—including Chicago School economists—make sense of the ongoing business plan of Amazon and other Internet “unicorns” to forgo profits for years in the pursuit of market share and expanding “shelf-space” for products and services?

            Day by day consumer safeguards evaporate in the ICE marketplace.  I am not endorsing ex ante remedies that anticipate problems, but may well create their own through inflexibility.  But in this current environment, even ex post responses to legitimate complaints do not appear necessary. Who needs a largely impartial and qualified referee when economic doctrine assumes the market can solve or prevent all ills?

            

            

Regulation as a Manageable Cost Center: The Example of Network Neutrality and the AT&T Acquistion of Time Warner

            Moving in for the kill, incumbent carriers have stretched their home team advantage.  With millions in lobbying, campaign contributions and sponsored research, along with a like-minded FCC majority, the unpleasantness of the prior 8 year Obama stretch largely will evaporate very quickly.

            Money well spent.

            Rather than frame regulatory debates in terms of midlevel issues of economic theory and political philosophy, think lower tier: cold hard cash money. Follow the money.

            Regulation impedes businesses like AT&T and Verizon from achieving even greater profitability, unless of course a captive regulator can be persuaded to tilt the competitive playing field by disadvantaging one or more competitors.  Incumbents have convinced decision makers that when regulation prevents profit maximizing behavior, there better be a damn good reason.  Notions of equity and level competitive playing fields will not suffice even though the advocates for deregulation do not have to meet a similar burden when claiming existing rules “stifle innovation” and “kill jobs.”

            The incumbent camp waxes poetic how regulation has preempted billions in investment, hurt employment and reduced innovation. But how can they prove this?  Answer: they don’t have to.

            No decision maker—certainly not the FCC—has called upon AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and others to show how network neutrality singularly has prevented incumbents from making investments, or that there are fewer patent applications and workers because network neutrality has poisoned the ecosystem.

            Where are the economics, empiricism and analysis that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai claims his management will deliver?  It’s nowhere to be seen, unless you accept conjecture as sufficient.  From the FCC across to incurious, deadline worrying reporters, the prevailing network neutrality frame is that somehow eliminating it will “free” stakeholders to do more good than what they now can do.  Exactly how does a non-discrimination requirement stifle profitability?  How is this requirement resurrection of old school public utility regulation of a non-existent monopoly? 

           

            No one has to answer such questions.

            As to the other big issue of the news cycle today, no one asks whether AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner’s content has impacts outside the vertical food chain of content creation and distribution. So this $85 billion deal is nothing more than your garden variety vertical merger which “everyone knows” is both benign and always permissible.

            Ask creators and distributors of content who compete with AT&T what the merger will do.  If they can overcome their fear of retaliation, you might see the AT&T mothership able to extract concessions from upstream content sources seeking access to AT&T satellite, cellular and wireline customers.  And you might see how raising costs of doing business for competitors makes it highly likely that churning customers might beat a path to one of the 3 content distribution flavors AT&T has to offer.

            But you have to ask.

Make Versus Buy in Information, Communications and Entertainment –Comparing the Strategy of AT&T with Facebook, Google and Other Unicorns

            With ample lines of credit and a relaxed global monetary policy, AT&T can easily move up and down the ICE food chain with massive acquisitions.  Sensing opportunities presented by changing marketplace conditions and threats to legacy business lines, the company has opted to buy market share and expertise. Other major ICE ventures have opted to make new products and services, or to blend make and buy as appropriate. 

            I believe differences in strategy largely depends on the confidence a venture has in its ability to integrate acquisitions into the family by exploiting the skills, expertise and market share the acquired venture offers.  We hear how merged companies will exploit synergies and efficiencies, but doing this requires great finesse.  Can AT&T embrace people, plans and skills not invented from within?

            Consider what Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other major firms have done on the make versus buy dichotomy for telecommunications transmission capacity.  These firms have opted to build undersea fiber optic transmission capacity rather than lease it from incumbent carriers on a cost plus, plus basis.

            Making content carriage instead of renting it makes absolute sense, because content companies can achieve savings in a major cost center, but one that is fungible. In other words, transmission capacity has substantial costs that content companies must incur, but transmission capacity does not significantly differ between carriers, or between a self-provisioning venture and one that leases capacity.

            Content does not have such fungible characteristics, because of a far wider range of good versus bad quality. Fiber optic transmission capacity matches, best practice, global standards, while content can be nation specific, idiosyncratic and quite risky to produce.  Perhaps Netflix has found ways to reduce risk of failure through data mining and a business plan where even large investments in single series will not threaten the ongoing viability of the company.  Generally speaking, even today, generating a winning content formula involves gut instinct, a long learning curve and many failures.  That explains why producers stick and copy with winning formulas resulting in countless sequels, prequels and duplicates.

            AT&T has ample funds to experiment, but with such a deep pocket the company risks buying at the top of a market and paying too great a premium over the stock price.  Consider its $48.5 billion DirecTV acquisition.  AT&T has bought a venture that has substantial recurring investment costs including the satellites with ten year useable lives and launch technology that historically has a one third probability of failure or live reducing anomaly.  Worse yet, AT&T did not get any internally generated content for its investment, at a time when consumers appear increasingly disinclined to pay for large and costly bundles of content, only a small portion of which they want to view.

            On the other hand, AT&T has grown and become a major powerhouse through successful acquisitions.  Only AT&T and Verizon remain from the seven divested Bell Companies.  Additionally AT&T knows how to bundle services and bill for it.

            Maybe AT&T can keep its acquisition success streak intact.  If it succeeds, it will have beaten stiff odds and proven its superior management skills, forecasting talent and business acumen.

AOL-Time Warner ($160 Billion in 2000) vs. AT&T-Time Warner ($85 Billion in 2017): Is It Different This Time?

            A little over 16 years ago, the merger of Time Warner and America Online resulted in an unprecedented loss in market capitalization.  Visions of synergy, efficiency and enhanced share valuation evaporated as reality kicked in quickly.  By 2002, the merged company already had to write off $99 billion in goodwill, an implicit recognition that a lucrative transformation did not occur.  See http://fortune.com/2015/01/10/15-years-later-lessons-from-the-failed-aol-time-warner-merger/.

            A significantly changed Time Warner, in a substantially changed marketplace, welcomes another mega-merger.  Proponents invoke the common refrain: This Time It’s Different.

So is it?  The answer lies in the changes in the company, AT&T and the information, communications and entertainment (“ICE”) marketplace.

            Time Warner has largely spun off non-core ventures, ironically an elimination of the vertical integration AT&T now seeks to achieve.  Time Warner now concentrates on content creation and distribution.  AT&T has invested heavily in migrating from wired and wireless telephony into a fully integrated and ubiquitous ICE venture.  Like Time Warner, AT&T recognizes the absolute need to change its market targets, or risk loss market share and declining prospects.  AT&T sees content ownership as key to its survival as the content carriage business declines.

            So far so good: AT&T vertically integrates and move up the ICE food chain into content creation.  It can better manage its transformation (there’s that word again) into a one stop shop for content access via any medium, including satellite, fiber, copper and terrestrial radio spectrum.

            AOL and a more diversified Time Warner had similar goals and expectations.  To put it mildly, it did not work out as planned. AOL’s stock capitalization dropped from about $226 billion to $20 billion.  The merged company could not come up with a successful strategy for managing the transition from a narrowband, dial up Internet access environment to one with easy and low cost market access by content and app makers using the broadband networks of unaffiliated carriers.

            Even if “necessity is the mother of invention” and adaptation, AOL-Time Warner could not make it work.  Maybe AT&T-Time Warner can with new synergies and enhanced consumer value propositions.  For example, AT&T offers its wireless subscribers a nearly unlimited data plan if they add DirecTV.  Such upselling and bundling positively exploits synergies and the merits in one stop shopping.

            We shall see in 2017 onward, because I expect the deal to achieve grudging, conditional, but not harmful regulatory approval.

AT&T—Time Warner and the Mixed Results in Vertical Integration by Bellheads

              Another day, another multi-billion dollar merger in the telecommunications marketplace.  See http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-reaches-deal-to-buy-time-warner-for-more-than-80-billion-1477157084.  Despite the disinformation about how incumbents have closed their pocketbooks to investment because of network neutrality and assorted regulation, AT&T appears ready to push the antitrust envelop with yet another massive $80 billion acquisition.  Not content to acquire more than 50% of the satellite television market, with its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV, AT&T has its sights on the content Time Warner creates.

            AT&T has a business plan to integrate vertically throughout the information, communications and entertainment (“ICE”) ecosystem.  Acquisitions provide the fastest way for the company to move up and down the ICE “food chain” of content creation, syndication, distribution and delivery to consumers.

            Vertical integration can achieve operational efficiencies as a single company can achieve savings through scale and a wide footprint of related business ventures.  On the other hand, it takes remarkably talented and nimble management to handle different components in the food chain.  Companies like General Electric have succeeded, but ironically this company has launched a campaign to divest itself of non-core business lines.  Other companies have failed even when they thought consumers would welcome having a “one stop shopping” opportunity, e.g., one call to book air travel, rental car and hotel.

            Depending on how your rate AT&T senior management, the company has wisely invested in the convergence of content and conduit, or it has unwisely deviated from its true competency.  Bear in mind that at divestiture from AT&T, companies like Verizon (then Bell Atlantic) invested heavily in content creation.  Verizon failed, because it did not ascend the content creation learning curve quickly enough.

            Simply put, the ICE marketplace has Bellhead, Nethead and Contenthead players with core competencies in legacy network conduits, next generation, Internet carriage and content, and core expertise in entertainment content.  The Bellheads historically have concentrated on installing and managing the networks needed to deliver content.  Incumbent Bellheads see the conduit business as having declining profit margins coupled with substantial capital expenditure requirements in new distribution technologies.  Bellheads have a twin mission to eliminate the need to maintain the fast becoming obsolete copper wire telephone networks, but also to invest in 4^th and 5^th generation wireless infrastructure.  Additionally, they hedge the network bet by moving up the food chain into content.

            Bellheads envy the profit margins Contentheads sometimes achieve and the business plans of some Netheads who use software to achieve unicorn status (multibillion dollar valuation with miniscule staff and investment) by using Bellhead networks for value added content delivery.

            Can you teach old dogs new tricks?  Bellhead telephone company senior management have to acquire the skills and understand the culture of Netheads and Contentheads.  Companies like Verizon and AT&T have made the transition into the Nethead world through acquisitions of companies such as MCI and UUNet.  Now comes an even harder challenge to embrace the Contenthead culture of Hollywood.   Good luck with that!

Make Versus Buy in Telecommunications—Verizon/Yahoo

        In a matter of days, Verizon will likely add to its inventory of content by acquiring much of Yahoo.  This deal and the earlier acquisition of America Online confirms the trend that deep-pocketed incumbents see the benefit in acquiring content, rather than growing their own.

            Many years ago, soon after divestiture from the Bell System several Regional Bello Operating Companies threw millions of dollars at becoming content creators, with little to show for it (pun intended).  Now incumbent telephone and cable television companies see the benefit in overnight vertical integration.  You can call it defensive, in light of declining margins and revenues for core, “legacy” business lines.  Alternatively, you can call it prudent recognition that in-house talent might not have necessary mindset and creative skills to flourish in Hollywood.

            The billions of dollars recently invested by companies such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T confirm that regulatory uncertainty and the “scourge” of network neutrality have not and will not stop investment and capital expenditures.  No company will invest in content if its managers conclude that they should not also make the necessary, concomitant investment in the physical plant needed to deliver content to consumers.  The new, or upgraded infrastructure will exploit technological innovations, such as the fifth generation cellular radio.  Some desirable technologies will not become ubiquitous simply because a profitable business case cannot be made for rural market penetration.

            Let us put to rest the red herring that today’s regulatory wingspan stymies investment in telecommunications.  Ask any senior executive—off the record—and she or he will acknowledge that the regulatory climate falls well below key financial and marketplace variables.  When regulation enters the calculus, too often incumbents use it as a vehicle to stymie innovation and competition. 

            I still do not understand how choice in set top box interfaces with broadband networks somehow hurts consumers and competition.  It does not, but incumbents can cast themselves as victims of bullies like Google and throw sand in the works.  Meanwhile managers at these very same companies proceed with multi-billion dollar acquisitions.  They seem quite optimistic about their staying power and ability to identify and capture new revenue streams.

Verizon and the Mixed Prospects of Vertical Integration

          Verizon will invest $4.4 billion to acquire AOL; see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/business/dealbook/verizon-to-buy-aol-for-4-4-billion.html?emc=edit_na_20150512.

            At first blush, this makes plenty of sense: Verizon has lots of retrained earnings and the ability to borrow billions; the company does not want to rely solely on wireless; and moving up the vertical food chain into content helps the company diversify and augment its home grown content.

 

            Okay so far, but we should not forget the billions lost in value when Time Warner, another content distribution carrier, tried to extract the value in AOL.  So what’s different this time?  Bear in mind that a few years after divestiture from AT&T, Verizon experimented with self-generated content and failed miserably.

            On the other hand, Comcast has successfully integrated content distribution with content generation.  The company acquired NBC-Universal and has ownership interests in many cable programming networks.

            Is there a way to predict a company’s prospects for a vertically integrating acquisition?

            I can think of two factors: the willingness of the acquiring company to encourage management of the acquired company to stay and more broadly whether the acquiring company can broaden its perspective.  Verizon need to expand its telephony (Bellhead) management skills to include content and alternative distribution channel management (Cablehead/Nethead).  Telephone company management skills will not suffice.

 

            You can teach an old dog new tricks, but Verizon would be wise to bring in several new breeds.

Summary of the FCC's Elimination of the Bar on Exclusive Program Access Contracts

           In a unanimous decision, the FCC has decided not to extend its program access rules beyond the scheduled October 5, 2012 sunset date. [1] The Commission believes that the marketplace for video content has become sufficiently competitive to obviate the need for an absolute ban on exclusive contracts for satellite cable programming or satellite broadcast programming between any cable operator and any cable-affiliated programming vendor in areas served by a cable operator.  Congress enactment the rule in the 1992 “when cable operators served more than 95 percent of all multichannel video subscribers and were affiliated with over half of all national cable networks.” [2]

            To guard against the possibility of ongoing harm resulting from any individual exclusive access contract, particularly in regional markets and for specific types of content like sports, the FCC will consider complaints on a case-by-case process. [3] The Commission will retain a rebuttable presumption that an exclusive contract involving a cable-affiliated Regional Sports Network (“RSN”) has the purpose or effect prohibited in Section 628(b) of the 1992 Act [4] that established the ban based on the assumption that the FCC needed to preserve and protect competition and diversity in the distribution of video programming.  The Commission noted that additional safeguards exist in its conditional grant of authority for Comcast to merge with NBC/Universal. [5] Additionally the Commission stated that it will require program suppliers to honor the full term of existing supply contracts and access complaints can include claims of discriminatory treatment where a supplier provides access to one or more distributors, but not to others.  Lastly the FCC stated its intention to continuing monitoring the video programming access marketplace to ensure that “the expiration of the exclusive contract prohibition, combined with future changes in the competitive landscape, result in harm to consumers or competition . . ..” [6] 

            In the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in MB Docket No. 12-68, the FCC proposed specific rebuttable presumptions about exclusive RSN access contracts.  The Commission sought comments on whether to establish a rebuttable presumption that an exclusive contract for a cable-affiliated RSN, regardless of whether it is terrestrially delivered or satellite-delivered, is an “unfair act” under Section 628(b) of the 1992 Cable Act as well as a rebuttable presumption that a complainant challenging an exclusive contract involving a cable-affiliated RSN is entitled to a standstill of an existing programming contract during the pendency of a complaint.  Additionally the Commission proposed to treat as rebuttable presumptions with respect to the “unfair act” element and/or the “significant hindrance” element of a Section 628(b) claim challenging an exclusive contract involving a cable-affiliated “national sports network” and a rebuttable presumption that, once a complainant succeeds in demonstrating that an exclusive contract involving a cable-affiliated network violates one or more provisions in Section 628 of the 1992 Cable Act. 

            The FCC’s decision not to maintain a bar on exclusive program access contracts represents a conclusion that the video programming marketplace evidences greater competition and less domination by vertically integrated companies, such as Comcast, that have ownership interests in both video program creation and distribution.  The Commission acknowledges that “the record here shows a mixed picture, indicating that vertically integrated cable programmers may still have an incentive to enter into exclusive contracts for satellite-delivered programming in many markets.” [7] 

            However, “the record evidence indicates that the cable industry’s share of MVPD subscribers nationwide has continued to decrease, from 67 percent in 2007 to 57.4 percent today, which indicates that vertically integrated cable operators as a whole – and considered solely on a national basis – have a reduced incentive to enter into exclusive contracts, compared to 2007.” [8]  On the other hand, the Commission noted that vertically integrated cable operators have maintained, or increased their market share in certain specific certain Designated Market Areas (“DMAs”).  Previously the Commission had determined that market shares in the range of 67-78 percent provided sufficient incentive and ability to use exclusive programming contracts as a way to maximize profitability.  The Commission noted that major multiple system operators, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, have pursued a clustering strategy in many DMAs accruing market share in excess of 70 percent. [9] Notwithstanding such concentration of control in many major metropolitan areas, the Commission has confidence in its ad hoc, complaint driven process in lieu of an absolute bar on exclusive program access contracts:

Because the record before us indicates that there may be certain region-specific circumstances where vertically integrated cable operators may have an incentive to withhold satellite-delivered programming from competitors, we believe that a case-by-case approach authorized under other provisions of the Act – rather than a preemptive ban on exclusive contracts – will adequately address competitively harmful conduct in a more targeted, less burdensome manner.  We disagree with commenters to the extent they imply that Congress intended the prohibition to expire only once vertically integrated cable operators no longer have any incentive to enter into exclusive contracts.  Such an interpretation contradicts Congress’s recognition that exclusive contracts do not always harm competition and can have procompetitive benefits in some cases.  [10] 

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[1]           Revision of the Commission’s Program Access Rules, Report and Order in MB Docket Nos. 12-68, 07-18, 05-192, Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in MB Docket No. 12-68 Order on Reconsideration in MB Docket No. 07-29, FCC 12-123 (rel. Oct. 5, 2012); available at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-12-123A1.doc.

[2]           Id. at ¶1.

[3]           “.In addition to allowing us to assess any harm to competition resulting from an exclusive contract, this case-by-case approach will also allow us to consider the potentially procompetitive benefits of exclusive contracts in individual cases, such as promoting investment in new programming, particularly local programming, and permitting MVPDs to differentiate their service offerings.” Id. at ¶2.

[4]               47 U.S.C. § 548 (2010) codified at 47 C.F.R. § 76.1002.

[5]           [A]pproximately 30 satellite-delivered, cable-affiliated, national networks (accounting for 30 percent of all such networks) and 14 satellite-delivered, cable-affiliated, RSNs (accounting for over 40 percent of all such RSNs) are subject to program access merger conditions adopted in the Comcast/NBCU Order until January 2018.  These conditions require Comcast/NBCU to make these networks available to competitors, even after the expiration of the exclusive contract prohibition.” Id. at 4.

[6]           Id. at 4.

[7]           Id. at 17.

[8]           Id.

[9]           “The Commission has, in past orders, observed that clustering may increase a cable operator’s incentive to enter into exclusive contracts for regional programming.  In the 2007 Extension Order, the Commission noted that Comcast passed more than 70 percent of television households in 30 Designated Market Areas (DMAs) and TWC passed more than 70 percent of television households in 23 DMAs.[9]  Based on the 2011 data provided by the cable operators, Comcast now passes more than 70 percent of television households in [REDACTED] DMAs and TWC passes more than 70 percent of television households in [REDACTED] DMAs.  Id. at 19.

[10]          Id. at 21.