My Friend And Colleague Peter Chernin Was Responsible For AT&T Buying Time Warner

Bloomberg - Credit longtime Hollywood executive Peter Chernin with igniting the spark that led to AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner Inc. Chernin and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson met over dinner on Martha’s Vineyard in early August as guests of Glenn Hutchins, a board member at the phone company and co-founder of private equity firm Silver Lake, Stephenson said Sunday in an interview. “Chernin was the one who first got me to appreciate the library that this company owns,” Stephenson said. “There’s nothing like it. And that’s when I got it in my mind that these two companies could work together.”Already partners in an online media venture, Stephenson and Chernin, a former deputy to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, had discussed the changes sweeping their industries. The growth of online and mobile viewing was a huge threat to pay-TV operators, like AT&T’s DirecTV. What Stephenson hadn’t considered was the value that Time Warner, the owner of the Warner Bros. film studio and HBO, could provide as part of AT&T.“Peter Chernin knows movie studios,” Stephenson said. Chernin couldn’t be reached for comment.

Big deals and big swinging dicks. That’s what Peter Chernin and Dave Portnoy do. He’s brokering the AT&T and Time Warner merger on the Vineyard and I’m buying Old Row from Nantucket. Kinda the same thing. Just power moves all over the Cape and Islands. Now I know what everybody is thinking. Hey Pres did Peter consult you about this? Of course he did. It wasn’t a direct conversation or anything like that, but I know how his mind works. It didn’t have to be said verbally. He’s thinking that if AT&T buys Time Warner and he’s named CEO then he controls basically the entire media landscape. Suddenly Bleacher Report redirects to Barstool. Suddenly Barstool Sports becomes synonymous with Hollywood. Suddenly the Barstool app is preloaded on every AT&T phone on the planet. Suddenly Barstool is EVERYWHERE. Don’t you people get it? This was all part of my master plan for world domination. You think I’d just sell Barstool to some Joe Schmoe? Of course not. I sold it to the guy who would put Barstool at the center of every major media deal in the history of media. The next time you hear about a meeting that led to an 85.4 billion merger the meeting will be at Dave Portnoy’s house in Nantucket. It’s all happening.

PS – Love Peter Chernin slumming it in the Vineyard to keep touch with the common folk.  #HumblePete