James b. Stewart, Was This $100 Billion Deal the Worst Merger Ever? NYTimes, Nov. 19, 2022.
This is a fascinating article, well worth reading. Here's some paragraphs that characterize the cultural difference between the two corporations:
That summer, Mr. Bewkes [Times Warner] accepted Mr. Stephenson’s [AT&T] invitation to address the AT&T board in Dallas. He ended up speaking for two hours, twice his allotted time. For sports-obsessed Texans, he chose a football analogy: AT&T is “a running team. You move slowly down the field, three yards and a cloud of dust. You depend on obedient execution.” By contrast, “we’re a passing team. We may miss two or three times. But when we complete a pass, we’re 50 yards down the line.”
He elaborated that AT&T employed hundreds of thousands of essentially fungible workers. Time Warner was different, with a relatively small number of executives given a high degree of discretion.
“We’re like a platoon fighting a guerrilla war in the jungle,” Mr. Bewkes recalled telling the board. “If you try to replace our team with a regimented army, you’re going to ruin all our network and studio businesses.”
More fundamentally, he warned that AT&T’s main strategy for competing with Netflix and Amazon was flawed: It wanted to funnel as much Warner content as possible to HBO Max.
On the contrary, he believed Time Warner’s strength was it was “like Switzerland,” selling to the highest and most appropriate bidder, both domestically and internationally, Mr. Bewkes contended. That’s why its television studio was so successful. Premium drama could go to HBO. But shows with mass market appeal, like “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory” were better off at the ad-supported broadcast networks. Hollywood talent was attracted to Time Warner’s neutrality.
There's much more at the link.
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