Discovery CEO: AT&T, Time Warner Poses a Big Question For Distributors

When it comes to the $85.4B mega deal between AT&T (NYSE:T) and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) content is king, according to Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslov. He joined the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo to discuss how the deal is a sign of the changing media landscape.

“In some ways it’s expected. As you look around the world, you see it much more in Latin America and in Europe. The cable operators first started offering broadband and the phone guys started offering broadband. But in the last year or two you’ve seen the quadruple play. So… You get your wireless, your multichannel, your broadband and your hard phone. And it’s very, very compelling,” he said.

Zaslov believes this deal highlights how significant unique content will be for media companies.

“The problem is that each of the distributors, if they can offer all of those through a pipe, it effectively becomes a dumb pipe… they need content in order to make their offerings special and unique. So it’s a reinforcement that great IT and content is going to be the ultimate winner here,” he said.

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He also discussed how consolidation impacts distributors.

“The bigger consolidation question is what happens now to the distributors? Do the cable operators now have to find a wireless solution in the U.S.? Most of them inside the U.S. have felt that they needed to. Does Verizon now look at AT&T and say wait a minute? They have DIRECTV and now they have a huge amount of content, we don’t have any one of those things. Do we need one or the other?” he said.