AT&T and DirecTV to merge
CNN's Miguel Marquez talks to Fortune Magazine's Leigh Gallagher about the announced merger of AT&T and DirecTV.

Your TV and internet habits, they maybe are changing this after today's major announcement that AT&T and DirecTV have agreed to merge. The roughly 50-billion-buck deal will have to be approved by federal regulators.
Under terms of the agreement, AT&T will acquire DirecTV in a stock and cash deal for about 95 bucks a share. It will create a company with unprecedented capabilities in mobile, video and broadbands services. The merger comes just after a few months after another blockbuster telecom deal, Comcast,announcing it was buying Time Warner, a deal worth about 45 billion dollars.
Joining me now on the phone is Leigh Gallagher, assistant managing editor of "Fortune" magazine.
Leigh, if regulators approve this merger, good, bad for consumers? It seems a little concerning.
Well, it's just a continuation of what's happening which is a huge consolidation of video, voice and data all coming together. And, you know, as you mentioned, this is right after the Time Warner and Comcast deal which is probably one reason why regulators may not have a problem with this deal because they will present a more robust competitor to Comcast Time Warner. But it's definitely interesting time.
Very interesting time, you do have to wonder, you have these very large companies that will be controlling all the broadband in the pipe that all of information is set through. Is it changing too fast? Are regulators able to keep up and actually properly regulated industry?
I think they are, I mean, regulators are looking at this industry very closely right now, especially with the whole net neutrality debate. So, this will probably draw a lot more attention, obviously. But, you know, we live in a changing time and this, you know, there's been more activity in this space in the past few months and there has been in years and I mean this the first big deal for AT&T since the failed effort to take over T-Mobile a couple of years ago, which was thwarted by regulators.
So there's a lot of activit. And what's interesting also is that pay TV is actually not- growth is slowing in pay TV. If you just think about it, all the activity that we all talk about, the way we watch TV now is changing and everyone, you know, watching "House of Cards" on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu are all getting into that game. So it's-a lot of analysts are saying that strategically it's not the most obvious deal, but they are doing it for other reasons.
Yes. Binge TV is what it's all about these days. But these two companies coming together for * and * consumer. What are they gonna see? What will they provide service wise?
Well, you know, they will provide DirecTV offers pay TV and AT&T sells data wireless and telecommunications services, so they will be bundling those. But you know, you can already get those bundled depending on your market. It may benefit consumers in rural areas, but it really remains to been seen, it's-these deals tend to make more sense for the companies than for the consumer sometimes.
And is it the Comcast/Time Warner Cables of the world that's gonna be most concerned about these guys, or is it the content providers, the studios and television networks that are going to be most concerned about this large amount of power?
It's both. I mean, Comcast will be the biggest competitor. But one of the things that this deal will do will give the combined company more access with content providers and more able to strike more and better deals with programming, which is really the name of the game.
Leigh Gallagher, thank you very much for your thoughts.
Thanks for having me.