Mergers: AOL/Time Warner's effect on Business The bottom-line to all the hype and talk about the AOL/Time Warner merger is that "Everyone" is running scared. Because, with the merging of companies that control massive amounts of access to the public, and hardware to get their product into your house, there is less and less choices for the American public. And there is even less chance for a smaller company to compete with the "Mega-Media" companies that have been formed in the wake of the telecommunications bill which allows broadcast, cable, and telephone companies to enter each other's markets, deregulate rates, and permit companies to have much larger monopolies.The best description of the situation as stated by Jeff Kagan, (telecommunications analyst) is that "Everything is being rewritten from a sub-atomic level". Everyone from AT&T to ZDnet, has something at stake here with a union of such magnitude. Ten years ago no one would have thought that a startup Internet company (AOL Time-line) would have the power, clout, or cash to make the move to acquire The Media Giant Time- Warner for 106 billion dollars. (This number changes through different phases of research due to the fact that it was an all stock deal, which the stock was worth 183 billion when the deal was struck, but since the announcement of the proposed merger, the FCC took much longer then expected to come to their decision and the stock prices dropped as time went on before the merger was approved.)With a lot of skepticism and concern AOL and Time Warner announced their intentions to conduct the largest acquisition in history. The last merger of this magnitude was when Viacom Inc. acquired the CBS Corporation for $80 billion, and with that became the world's leading company in the production, promotion and distribution of entertainment, news, sports and music. And before that Disney acquired ABC for $19 billion. In 1982, Ben Bagdikian wrote The Media Monopoly, an ...
