TAKE THAT, HATERS
AT&T offers 100-channel, $35 pkg.
AT&T boss Randall Stephenson and Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes on Tuesday stepped up their fight for their $85 billion gettogether— after previous efforts over the weekend failed.
The phone boss, fighting back against critics who forecast the mega-merger will lead to higher prices, unveiled a new 100-channel mobile TV service for $35 per month.
The offering, called directv Now, will roll out in November and provide head-on competition for the cable guys, he said.
“It’s a game changer,” said Stephenson.
AT&T customers will not accrue data charges for the new service, which may be limited to two screens.
The telecom giant recently purchased the satellite TV company.
“I’m bordering on evangelical about it . . . this is the most exciting thing I’ve been part of in a long time,” said Stephenson, speaking at a wsjdlive conference.
“This is a way to drive pricing down in the marketplace,” he added, aiming to give regulators a reason to embrace the already controversial merger.
An offering from Sling TV, from satellite rival Dish Network, costs $25 for 40 channels.
Sony and Verizon also offer a streaming TV package, and Hulu plans to launch one next year.
Stephenson and Bewkes swung for the fences, saying their union would not just take on cable companies but also break up the Google-Facebook digital advertising duopoly.
“We waited year after year . . . ,” said Bewkes, referring to the cable companies and their reluctance to broadly roll out TV Everywhere — an initiative that makes pay-TV channels available on the internet.
“They didn’t have the skill or the scale to do the interfaces,” said Bewkes, adding that cable distributors didn’t want to fork over the investments necessary to make it happen.
Bewkes also unloaded on programmers who waited for carriage renewal talks to sell their online rights.
Despite the Stephenson-Bewkes offensive, there are still plenty of folks opposed to the deal.
“This is a heavily leveraged deal,” Todd O’Boyle, program director at media and democracy group Common Cause, told The Post.
“Consumers will be footing the bill for this,” he said. “That’s a major concern of the public interest — higher rates.”
AT&T has net debt of $119 million.