https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200220/10052043952/dish-floats-directv-merger-because-whats-little-mindless-monopolization-among-friends.shtml

We just got done with AT&T's $86 billion merger with Time Warner, a deal that immediately drove up costs for consumers and competitors alike. That was followed up with the recent approval of T-Mobile's $26 billion merger with Sprint, another deal the lion's share of objective experts say will reduce competition, raise rates, and end with thousands of pink slips as redundant positions are inevitably eliminated.

With the ink barely dry on both deals, Dish CEO Charlie Ergen is now (once again) floating a merger with DirecTV, insisting that such a union is "inevitable" as the company continues to reel from TV cord cutting. As the US press loves to do, the proposal was parroted rather unskeptically as a seemingly good idea: