At Time Warner, executives saw AT&T as just a “big phone company from Texas.” At AT&T, they thought Hollywood would play by their rules. That combination led to strategic miscalculation unrivaled in recent
corporate history.

By James B. Stewart

James B. Stewart, a columnist at The New York Times, interviewed more
than two dozen people involved in the AT&T-Time Warner merger and its aftermath, including both former chief executives.

Soon after a sweeping courtroom victory in 2018 cleared the way for
AT&T’s $100 billion takeover of Time Warner, John Stankey, AT&T’s chief operating officer and the newly anointed chief executive of Warner
Media, summoned his top Warner Media executives to a meeting at the Time
Warner Center off Columbus Circle.

They included Kevin Tsujihara, the head of the Warner Bros. movie
studio; Richard Plepler, the head of HBO; and Jeff Zucker, CNN’s chief executive. Mr. Stankey handed them a typed document titled “Operating
Cadence and Style,” and sat there while they read it. The memo was two
pages, single-spaced, and the silence stretched for what seemed an
excruciating length.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/business/media/att-time-warner-deal.html

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