AT&T promised a TV revolution — instead, we got a giant mess
Last week, AT&T announced it would be spinning off its TV business — including DirecTV, AT&T TV, and U-verse — in a deal it claimed would greatly benefit the company’s customers, employees, and shareholders. The deal provides AT&T with a $7.8 billion cash infusion to pay down debt and recent wireless spectrum purchases, and a 70 percent stake in the “new” DirecTV. But it also values the entire operation at around $16.25 billion, a massive loss from the $67 billion AT&T paid just a few years earlier for just DirecTV alone.
“It’s fair to say that some aspects of the transaction have not played out as we had planned,” AT&T said of the deal, trying to put a good face on a more than $50 billion loss, “such as pay TV households in the US...