Writers Guild and Producers Sign New Agreement

Remember the writers' strike a few years ago. Tons of people out of work. Movie and TV show production stopped. Neither side could agree how digital dollars were to be shared. And at the end, the writers lost and the studios and networks saved tons of money. And how quickly the viewers forget the wasteland of programming including the rise and fall of The Jay Leno Show.

Well as far the WGA seems to be concerned, there will be no repeat behavior as a new deal was quickly and silently signed. "The agreement comes after less than three weeks of bargaining, in contrast to a writers' strike in 2008 shut that down much of Hollywood's production for 100 days." Members still have to sign off on the deal, but it seems certain to be sealed. No one wants to repeat that fiasco again for quite some time.

Will FCC Approve AT&T and T Mobile Merger - Absolutely

Can the FCC and Department of Justice ever say no to a deal? It may feel warranted initially but it never happens. These deals go through and for the most part it is for the better. It is the dragging out of the process that seems to hurt both companies and the competitive process. The NYT touts some pretty well known mega deals and most have been approved. But beyond these mergers, including the most recent NBC Comcast deal, what about others in the broader communication industry.

When AT&T was split up into baby bells who would have thought that they would merge and merge again. But despite the threat of oligopoly, new technological changes enabled new competition. The rise of the cable IP phone allowed cable companies to offer competing telephone service. That most likely was never envisioned.

The merger of Sirius and XM into a monopolistic satellite radio company seemed to appear as a huge concern too. But the merger was approved and there remains competition because of both terrestrial radio and mobile music devices. The delay in getting this merger approved only hurt Sirius in maintaining a competitive stance in an ever changing technology world.

And so to the question of the AT&T/T Mobile merger, it too should be approved ASAP. True it reduces the cellular competition into the big two with Verizon (perhaps 3 if you count Sprint), but cellular is facing growing competition from a WIFI world. And I am confident that work is on-going on the next innovation in wireless communication. For AT&T and others, they need to gain economies of scale as the wired side of their business erodes. This merger step forward seems necessary to simply remain competitive in an ever evolving and changing media landscape.