a few clarifications. att as a business is much, much larger than dtv. concerning tv, dtv has way more traditional TV subs than att uverse. both directv and att uverse license programming from all the majors. the "control" of the business will be firmly in the hands of att. the control of the content business and perhaps the tv business in general, i would speculate, will be well-populated with dtv people.
the rights that uverse has and that dtv has are not likely to align perfectly. the language, the scope of the grant of rights, the programming lineups, the costs, etc. will vary substantially and perhaps even materially between the 2 licensing entities. they will work to sort this out, over time, and in the process of doing renewal deals with their existing network partners.
we don't know if the p12 will be a priority for the combined entity. we don't know where it will fall in the pipeline for renewal. we don't know what other bigger and more expensive issues they are sorting through on the programming front.
we only know att uverse (and maybe they have like 5mm subscribers or something like that) has the p12 and that directv (and maybe they have like 20mm+ subscribers) does not have the p12.
also, if you look at the filings and such, att views this as a footprint play. they want to bundle voice/data, etc. with the dtv tv services. the uverse fiber overbuild was super expensive and time consuming. this gets them a whole bunch of new customers (even accounting for overlap of current consumers who have both att services and dtv services). this isn't just about tv for att. it is about bundling and increasing arpu, increasing net adds, and reducing churn. the more people vending from att for more key services, the better, in att's view.
