The Hulk Hates Fascist Media Consolidation

Let's be clear about something. Large media consolidation is always harmful. There is no real debate. There's 50 years of indisputable evidence that massive U.S. media mergers always result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, and shittier overall product as freshly-fused companies force workers and customers to pay off deal debt. That's been particularly true of Time Warner and Warner Brothers, which has been bought and sold numerous times over the last quarter century, with every deal more pointless and harmful than the last. AT&T's acquisition of the company was a particularly-turdish master class in dysfunction, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs and no shortage of bad blood and cancelled projects. These are uniformly-awful deals that benefit nobody, orchestrated by terrible rich men who aren't interested in building anything useful, creative, or real. They're elaborate illusory-growth shell games designed to nab tax breaks, goose stock value, and justify the…