AT&T and Dish’s HBO battle is the bleak future of cable and streaming

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Author: Chaim Gartenberg

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Yesterday, Dish customers lost access to HBO due to an ongoing licensing dispute between the premium cable channel and the TV distributor. It marks the first time in HBO’s 40-plus-year history that it’s gone dark. This sort of thing seems to happen every once in a while in the cable industry, but it also might be the first indication of the closed-off cable nightmare that could be in our future as companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Disney take control of ever-larger chunks of the media landscape.

HBO is owned by WarnerMedia, which was acquired as part of AT&T’s massive Time Warner acquisition earlier this year. Back when AT&T was arguing that it should be allowed to merge in the first place, one of the Department of Justice’s complaints...

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