Los Angeles Times - 06.08.2019

BuSINESS

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2019:: LATIMES.COM/BUSINESS

C

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When AT&T
acquired
Time Warner
last year for
$85 billion,
the compa-
nies said the
deal would
be great for
consumers,
who would benefit from
lower prices and improved
service.
The Justice Department
said the opposite, predic-
ting the merger would give
AT&T so much market
power that price hikes and
channel blackouts were all
but inevitable.
And now we know. The
government was right.
AT&T wasted no time in
raising the price of its Di-
recTV satellite TV service by
$5 a month. It then raised
the price of its DirectTV
Now streaming service by
$10 a month. (The company
said last week DirecTV Now
is being renamed AT&T TV
Now.)
More than 6.5 million of
AT&T’s DirecTV and U-
verse pay-TV customers are
currently cut off from CBS
channels because AT&T
says CBS wants too much
money for its programming.
Meanwhile, more than 12
million Dish Network and
Sling TV subscribers have
lost access to AT&T’s HBO
and Cinemax channels
because, according to Dish,
AT&T wants too much
money for its own program-
ming.
Put more succinctly,
AT&T, after raising sub-
scriber costs, wants to pay
as little as possible for chan-
nels included on its pay-TV
services. But it wants as
much as possible from other
pay-TV services for its own
channels.
And it’s willing to hold
consumers hostage to get
what it wants.
“When you start seeing
blackouts, it’s obvious
you’re looking at a merger
that’s not serving consum-
ers very well,” said Herbert
Hovenkamp, a law professor
at the University of Pennsyl-
vania and one of the nation’s
top antitrust authorities.
He told me it’s becoming
increasingly clear that a
federal judge erred when he
ruled in a 172-page decision
that there was little to fear
from the “vertical merger”
AT&T and Time Warner
were proposing.
“We’re now paying the
price for that decision,”
Hovenkamp said.
U.S. District Judge Rich-
ard J. Leon ruled last year —
and was subsequently up-
held by an appellate court —
that the government was
mistaken when it warned of
consumers being harmed by
the merger.

After

merger,

a money

grab by

AT& T

DAVID LAZARUS

[SeeLazarus,C5]

When the Camp fire be-

gan to rage in Paradise, Cal-

if., in November, the owners

of the family-run Collier

Hardware store in nearby

Chico faced a situation un-

like any they’d seen.

A business that might

welcome 200 customers on

an average day, Collier was

suddenly dealing with five

times that number — “and

they all wanted the same

thing,” co-owner Steve Lu-

cena said.

Alarmed by dense

smoke, shoppers were snap-

ping up portable air puri-

fiers and breathing masks in

staggering numbers. Collier

Hardware sold nearly 60,

adult-size masks in a couple

of weeks, and gave away

thousands more that were

specially designed for chil-

dren.

“With the purifiers, we

had multiple people unload-

ing them from the truck, and

they were sold before we

could get them all the way

into the store,” Lucena said.

“People didn’t care what

model it was or how much it

cost. We’d normally sell four

to six in a year, and we sold

100 in a day.”

As hot, dry weather set-

tles upon the West this sum-

mer, fears of massive wild-

fires — and the smoke they

produce — are again taking

hold. It’s true not only in

In California, a

rush to get some

breathing room

Alarmed by the dense

smoke from wildfires,

consumers are

snapping up home air

purifiers and masks.

By Mark Kreidler

JEREMY SAYLORS,11, adjusts his breathing mask as his family returns in No-

vember to their home in Paradise, Calif., which was destroyed by the Camp fire.

Marcus YamLos Angeles Times

[SeeSmoke,C6]

The Hollywood & Highland shopping

and entertainment center has been ac-

quired by a real estate partnership that

plans to renovate the property, which

opened in 2001 and helped lure investment

back to the iconic neighborhood.

San Jose real estate company DJM and

Gaw Capital USA, the U.S. arm of a Hong

Kong private equity firm, announced the

purchase Monday. The group bought the

center from Los Angeles company CIM

Group for an undisclosed amount. The sale

does not include the complex’s Dolby The-

atre, where the Oscars are held.

In a news release, DJM and Gaw Capital

said renovations at the 7.6-acre site would

start next year and finish in 2021.

Even though the parties would not re-

veal its price, they described it as the larg-

est sale of retail space outside Manhattan

since early 2017, when a Las Vegas shopping

center sold for $389 million. El Warner, an

executive vice president with commercial

brokerage Colliers International, called it a

vote of confidence in marquee retail loca-

tions and the Hollywood market.

Warner said it could spur additional re-

tail and multifamily investment nearby,

continuing a multiyear flood of investment

into the area.

HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLANDwas bought by San Jose real estate company DJM and Gaw Capital USA,

the U.S. arm of a Hong Kong private equity firm. Some retail space will be converted into offices.

Perry C. RiddleLos Angeles Times

Retail-entertainment

complex in L.A. sold

Hollywood & Highland to be renovated starting in 2020

THE SALEdoes not include the complex’s Dolby Theatre,

shown in 2014, where the Academy Awards are held.

Al SeibLos Angeles Times

By Andrew Khouri

[SeeHollywood,C4]

8chan, a hate-filled forum

site where multiple sus-

pected mass murderers

have posted manifestos to

cheers from their anony-

mous fellow users, has gone

dark after losing access to

crucial web infrastructure.

Cloudflare said late Sun-

day it would cease acting as

8chan’s content distribution

network and cybersecurity

provider, one day after a

gunman killed 22 people and

wounded 26 others in El

Paso minutes after appar-

ently publishing an essay

railing against immigration

from Latin America. The

move will probably make it

difficult for 8chan to repel

crippling distributed denial-

of-service attacks until it’s

able to find a new provider.

But Cloudfare Chief Exe-

cutive Matthew Prince said

the move by his San Fran-

cisco firm was unlikely to

keep 8chan offline for long,

as the forum site may find

another service provider.

“Unfortunately the ac-

tion we take today won’t fix

hate online,” he wrote in a

blog post. “It will almost cer-

tainly not even remove

8chan from the Internet. But

it is the right thing to do.”

In a tweet, 8chan sug-

gested the effects of Cloud-

flare’s decision would be

temporary, writing, “There

might be some downtime in

the next 24-48 hours while

we find a solution.”

The site did find a new

provider, briefly, moving its

domain name registration

to Epik, a company whose

CEO, Rob Monster, released

a statement about the need

to protect legal online

speech and “not terminate

accounts based on arbitrary

reasoning or political pres-

sure.” But the reprieve

ended when Voxility, whose

servers Epik rents, booted it

as a customer.

Prince had largely re-

sisted the idea that his com-

pany should be responsible

for policing the content of

8CHAN

FORUM

BOOTED

AFTER

EL PASO

The site, where

multiple suspected

mass shooters posted

manifestos, no longer

backed by Cloudflare.

By Jeff Bercovici

[See8chan,C4]

Biggest loss of

2019 for stocks

The S&P 500 endured

a 3% drop, while the

Dow slid 2.9%, as the

U.S.-China trade war

escalated. C

Former Tinder

exec sues IAC

Rosette Pambakian

alleges her colleague

Gregory Blatt sexually

harassed and assault-

ed her at a party. C

IPic chain files

for bankruptcy

Pioneering company

was known for fueling

the rise of dine-in

moviegoing and other

upscale concepts. C