The legacy media conglomerate model is officially obsolete. For the better part of a decade, investors watched telecom sector giants attempt to marry high-margin broadband infrastructure with capital-intensive, lower-growth media production. The theory relied on building a closed ecosystem where the pipeline and the content fueled each other.
In practice, that forced combination consistently trapped value, creating a severe conglomerate discount across the communication services sector. The market simply refused to pay premium technology multiples for businesses anchored by fading linear television networks.
