Who Might Buy CNN?

By Ken Doctor

We know that Randall Stephenson says CNN’s not for sale, even though he doesn’t even own it yet. As the news emerged last week that the Department of Justice’s antitrust division has been jawboning with AT&T Inc. on its agreed-to purchase of Time Warner Inc., with CNN an apparent sticking point, the question quickly followed: What would Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, do?

Would he take the DOJ’s objection to court, or would he agree to divest the sticking parts of the deal, most likely CNN and parent Turner Broadcasting System Inc.?

Stephenson answered the question quickly: To the courts, he said on Thursday, November 9, and that seemed to be the immediate end of the question, though even Stephenson acknowledged would-be offers for the assets already had arrived in his office.

In fact, in this nothing-is-stable media world, all bets need to be off on who might own what come 2020. This is a media industry — TV, film, magazine and newspaper — in the throes of upheaval. Pick your theory of the case about the 2020-2025 reality — the primacy of content, the age of platforms, the need for scale in distribution, the necessity of direct consumer relationships, an age of real convergence — and ambitious strategists could make all kinds of combinations justifiable.

Just days before the news of the Justice Department potentially blocking AT&T, we heard that Walt Disney Co. had been in talks to buy substantial Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. assets. Further, the president’s chosen Federal Communications Commission chairman, Ajit Pai, is busily demolishing most of the rules on limiting the concentration on media ownership, opening the potential of deals we previously thought impossible.

At the moment, an odd economic-high, politically low moment in America, it looks like big prized names in the American media business could be in play. That’s a big story that will play out into 2018, as strategists guess at what the 2020 landscape will look like.