Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
AT&T CEO John Stankey said Monday that the company’s focus on its connectivity business in the US meant it didn’t have the global reach to grow a global streaming business with WarnerMedia, and the company decided it was “time to unleash the media assets” of WarnerMedia to Discovery.
AT&T announced on May 17th that it would spin off its WarnerMedia business to merge it with TV company Discovery. The resulting entity, which has yet to be named and is still awaiting regulatory approval, will be a competitor in the cable space and for streaming content giants like Netflix and Disney; WarnerMedia owns HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and the Warner Bros. movie studio, while Discovery has a number of channels that focus more on reality…
