Recently AT&T TV launched and AT&T has confirmed with Cord Cutters News they will no longer be promoting DIRECTV, U-Verse TV, AT&T TV Now, and AT&T Watch TV. Instead, AT&T is going to be pushing AT&T TV as their focus.
This is consistent with what AT&T employees have told Cord Cutters News. According to our sources, AT&T will put all of its marketing into AT&T TV and HBO MAX. The only question here is what this means for DIRECTV as AT&T has not stopped marketing the service, but the company does say its main TV focus is AT&T TV. This comes as AT&T has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that they are no longer focusing on U-Verse TV.
AT&T has also slowly been shutting down the U-Verse TV and AT&T TV NOW social media. A few weeks ago, U-Verse TV’s Facebook page merged with the It’s On AT&T Facebook page (It’s On AT&T used to be the DIRECTV NOW Facebook page). Last year, we noticed that AT&T locked the AT&T U-Verse Twitter account and directs everyone to subscribe to It’s On AT&T on Twitter.
At first, we wondered if AT&T was shutting down all of its TV social media accounts to merge them with It’s On AT&T. A quick check shows that DIRECTV still has all of its social media accounts active.
Recently AT&T’s COO reiterated a desire to sell AT&T’s satellite TV service DIRECTV according to a report from Deadline. Yet John Stankey warned that getting regulatory approval for this deal is “a little unpredictable.”
Some seem to think this deal would go through. On September 30, 2019, Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson Analysts said that if DIRECTV and DISH came to an agreement about a merger, it’s likely that regulators would sign off on the deal.
“Satellite TV was growing by leaps and bounds at the time. Now it is in free fall. That alone may be enough to settle the debate; sure, two would be better than one, but both are credible bankruptcy risks on their own. Heck, they’d be a credible bankruptcy risk even together. Simply preserving an option for rural America at all would be the argument. And it would be a reasonably persuasive one,” wrote Moffett.
Currently, DISH and DIRECTV are moving toward the same fate as XM and Sirius satellite radio. At some point, the subscriber numbers between the two companies can’t support two companies, but if they merge a single company could survive and offer TV to customers who can’t get a streaming service due to poor Internet.
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