To understand the lay-offs at DC Comics and Warner Brothers, you have to understand who is calling the shots. Warner was recently bought by AT&T. And like any villain in a story, AT&T is a disguise.
I used to work for Pac Bell, the California Phone company. In the 1990s it was bought by SBC, a Texas Company that went on a buying spree of phone companies. It paid for it by cost cutting - laying people off.
They were also âwe know bestâ and squashed any new ideas. Imagine, telecommuting was a concept photo companies sold to business because it would require buying data lines. But SBC didnât trust its own employees to telecommute. You needed to get a vice-presidentâs approval to work at home.
By aughts, the Long Distance Company AT&T was in dire financially straits. So SBC bought it. No one knew what SBC was so it bought AT&T because it had the best name recognition. So AT&T is really a backward thinking Texas Company. Thatâs who is making decisions regarding Warner and DC Comics.
In 2014, AT&T paid $67 billion to acquire Direct TV in an effort to get into the television business. That didnât go so well (they are now trying to sell pieces off). This is what motivated their next purchase.
AT&T paid $85 billion for Time/Warner. As Iâve explained above, they immediately follow purchases with lay-offs. Comic books donât make enough profit to impact AT&Tâs bottom line so naturally DC Comicsâ staff was a target. But in their backward thinking they donât realize how comic books build fan bases, and fans go to the movies that create billion dollar movie franchises.
