both transactions have been unwound by at&t ceo john stankey.buying both of the businesses it was a remarkable aboutface. >> john stankey was not the ceo at the time. i want to make it clear to the viewers. at&t spent yearsracking up hug debt and randall stevenson pmade tens of billions of dollars. in less than a year, his former number two, the ceo, saying we will unwind all of that. everything you spent doing, former ceo, we will undo while everyone internally made t tens of millions i'm all forg getting paid. the reversal in the stratosphere, alex, is shocking. >> it will be interesting to hear from john stankey in the days to come about why he decided now is the right time to do this and also about why at&t bought time warner initially if you go back a few years, i wrote a story about this in december listen to what randall stevenson said a bunch of word salad that never panned out the content and mobility and making the new thing to enhance both none of that panned out. john stankey realized that there is no reason for a phone company to ow

joining me is david zaslav, and john stankey, the ceo of at&t. rning, and i certainly appreciate it. john, i'm going to start with you and the soon to be most powerful man in the media, stand by, i want to start with a couple of questions of you, john you know, i'm going to use the word bold. i think you have been amazingly bold in ten months or so in the job or maybe a year in the job at this point. it doesn't always mean being bold is being rightm you know, it's less than three years since you closed the warner transaction, it cost your shareholders $107 billion when you include debt in that deal. so why reverse course now? >> david, look, you know, things have changed a bit since we did the transaction, and despite the fact that, you know, we are doing this relatively quickly, shareholders have still done reasonably well with this decision i think when you look at, you know, the cash flows that we generated during that period of time, look at asset sales we've made, and you know, frankly, i have an incredible degree of confidence that david's g

>> we should ask, there's a call going on right now, they were asked, david zaslav and john stankey wereink is a bit of -- a bit of a punt all around so, probably complicated there but i have to tell you, i think this deal is going to go down in sor sort of history as a case study in smart and clever negotiating on the part of discovery i don't think anybody had this on their radar the idea that discovery effectively is taking control of warner media, a company that is meaningfully larger than them which is a challenge business, effectively can be described as challenged putting them all together and we talk about the speed of it all when i meant structurally, this is a deal as we've said it doesn't require any voting at this point by shareholders it's goinging to close likely quickly. it boxes out any potential suitor there's been talk for years about whether nbcuniversal would want to merge with warnermedia to sbbolster the assets of peacock. it's a question whether some of the assets would want to merge with assets of time warner, like cnn. to see john malone put this all together is

>> what a bad strategist john stankey is i think that's all i thought this morning honestly so much, try not to use bad words, but ridiculous merger to start with they went on and on about it and now we're celebrating this this is a lose lost value here and everything else and shouldn't have been in the business in the first place. it's nonsense and i appreciate david zaslav, old-time media trying to spin it his way. netflix and the others had 26 laps around the track and these guys moving chess pieces around kind of pointlessly and a waste of shareholder money what is there to say what a bunch of nonsense see if they can keep up. why not? >> i actually referred, kara, to a code appearance by randall stephenson i think it was a couple years ago he tried to explain why this vertical miss would work did it make sense at the time? or have -- >> no. >> have dynamics changed where it's less relevant now >> no. i remember did it with john stankey, too i kept thinking in my bubble in my head and may have said it out loud uh-huh the phone company owning media they can own it. comcast has don

at&t and my colleague here, of course, had very little to say about his thoughts about at&t and john stankeysay about the future of that company, the decision to cut the dividend as you might imagine, john malone sees things a bit differently. take a listen. >> john stankey showed a hell of a lot of courage in making this decision at this time. because he found himself really chasing two capital intensive, very competitive rabbits and i think his idea, his idea to refocus at&t on their primary traditional business, and allowing other management to pursue with a different balance sheet the direct consumer opportunity, was a brave decision and i think they have great positioning to be able to duke it out with the other two leaders, for leadership in the connectivity space okay >> yeah. >> wireless and wired. i mean they're a formidable force, and he took, john stankey had the fortitude to cut the dividend, and refocus the company on competing and growing. >> it's a bold move. >> connectivity. >> it's a mold move. >> it's a bold move. >> yes. >> it's a bold move. >> but it doesn't always, you k

two of the insiders tallied that ceo john stankey and the past ceo. $4.5 million all in the wake of theoff warner media get this, although he has been an insider since 2004, this was ceo john stankey's first ever insider buy. wow! a name to watch and what has been a crusher of capital in the last decade. maybe at&t is turning it around. we will find out the ceo is a big buyer there are the three. we do it every week here on "wex." >>> let us welcome in our friend and contributeor jenny from gilman hill. two things i like in no particular order i like soap and i like spaghetti sauce. i bring up both because they are both made by a company you like and, by the way, cnbc headquarters neighbor unilever are there better opportunities outside of the united states >> there are amazing opportunities outside of the u.s. we manage and i never get to talk about this. i'm excited. we manage our equity income strategy that is u.s. based. we also have an international income strategy. in the last year, when our clients have given us a choice to weigh in on the allocation with the u.s. stocks and inte

timewarner, but i was shock ed to hear people close to them say that they like stankey now because john stankeyand stankey's just so you know, rationale was that randall was the ceo, he wanted to empire- build. i was his number two and i was just trying to help him out, so there you go. maybe it's working with investor , maybe not. [laughter] you look shocked. you look shocked why is that, liz? liz: [laughter] i'm thinking okay, that's an interesting way to look at it charlie, thank you, we are coming right back. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ that building you're trying to buy, - you should ten-x it. - ten-x it? ten-x is the world's largest online commercial real estate exchange. you see it. you want it. you ten-x it. it's that fast. . . but with buildings. sweet. oh no, he wasn't... oh, actually... that looks pretty good. see it. want it. ten-x it. yum! these are the people who work on the front lines. they need a network that's built right. that's why we created verizon frontline. the advanced network and technology for first responders. built on america's most reliable network. built fo

, what's the best way to extract value from these -- from these assets i think having the two, john stankeyendent personal opinions, those are zaslav's and stankey's, the arguments that they make and having discovery with all of its assets and synergies and leadership and pure play at&t are at this stage the best way to extract value from the shareholders for these assets. >> that's been a question that's been asked repeatedly, glen. is it a situation where you can't have the pipes matched up with the content company, it doesn't make a lot of sense. there aren't many examples where that sticks. you can point to comcast, our parent company, but aside from that even verizon unwound the smaller purchases it made of aol and yahoo! very recently, too. is it just too complicated to have content and pipes together? >> well, you know, the complication one heard about becky was not the management of the company but the capacity of the stock market analysts and buyers to value a combined company like that. the combined media analysts and tech -- telecom analysts couldn't value it. i think inside the

it is what this new media colos sus is going to do to that industry i did have a chance to ask john stankeydoes at&t look like and for example what is the capital structure going do look like and what does it mean for the dividend. >> taking the cash to go to the highest return and it is not to be unexpected that when we shift out as much of the cash flow as we do with the media company transaction, what we have done with the directv transaction to resize the dividend as a result of that but general rating really attractive returns far in excess of the 5% yield that maybe the returns is the right thing to do for shareholders and want the business to grow organically. >> will be a somewhat different at&t in terms of shareholder base perhaps with organic growth being a priority you can see, of course, what they're targeting in terms of 20 billion in free cash flow for the payout ratio and 43 billion is debt reduction and use it to expand, to compete against the likes of t-mobile, comcast our parent with a wireless business and verizon. look at the properties to be brought together but may be

's less rt short-term than these poor suffering dividend seeking investors randal stephenson, john stankey, welcome to the wall of shame thanks for nothing i waited until a day when the stock was up it rallied $.68, because unlike management , i didn't want to be complicit in destroying shareholder value. here's the bottom line when rich people question why their taxes are going up when they wonder why they have gotten so unpopular. i want them to look at these two names. they are powerful, tough people. who defend their actions to the end, who are proud of their the actions or at least they act so. but there's no defense, there's no defense against stupidity, and depraved indifference, and sadly not much accountability either, other than the sting of "mad money" wall of shame. i guess that will have to do >>> joe in missouri, joe >> caller: mr. cramer, it's a pleasure to be speaking with you, sir. >> thank you >> caller: long time fan and first time caller and i want to thank you for your investment advice over the years. >> thank you, thank you very much >> caller: the company i'm callin

. >> john stankey showed a hell of a lot of courage in making this decision at this time, because heound himself really chasing two capital intensive, very competitive rabbits, and i think his idea to refocus at&t on, on their primary traditional business and allowing other management to pursue with a different balance sheet, the direct consumer opportunity, was a brave decision. >> meanwhile, kara, you say it's persuasive the case that stankey is the worst media strategist in recent memory >> not recent memory so many, carl. i think that -- that's brave gosh wow. that's something to say. know what i mean brave to get out of -- i don't know you could make so many metaphors. he got them into this mess and pulled them out of it. i don't know if he's pulled out of it correctly. that was my argument even pulling out here, the discovery, time warn sir not big enough to fight what's coming from tech. tech can sit out and wait this thing. there has to be giant tech companies. i'm surprised there aren't other bidders. thought there might be including comcast. maybe they have antitrust worrie

we look at what at&t and john stankey and warner has, it's the greatest treasure of global ipo that'soved by everyone in the world, together with the treasure we have i think you look at the value of mgm and you say, wow, and what does that mean we're worth if we could make this all come together we think we can. >> yeah. clearly here zaslav feeling good about the $8.5 price tag because he says that indicates how valuable their content deal is, jon. a little bit from zaslav he's pleased that panned out like that. >> they have to spin it one way or another i want to know your perspective, why did they pay so much when the marquee title and brand in the portfolio is james bond, who arguably has aged the worst as far as heros in the metoo movement, some of the old movies, i don't know if you can show the kids. >> look, jon, i think the real issue with james bond is not how well or poorly he has aged and that franchise has aged, but the fact that amazon is only getting 50% of the james bond franchise. the other 50% is owned by the family out of the uk they are not entirely owning the jame

20 billion free cash flow numbers, 8 billion and paying 15 now -- >> -- 40 years -- >> -- asked john stankey, ceo of at&t and of course that is the case but that seems to be filtering into the marketplace the idea that at&t is not going to have the yield or the dividend payout when it has a new capital structure once this deal with discovery is completed which is going to be more than a year from now. neither stock performed well yesterday despite what seemed to be very strong response early in the market day and as the day went on, everything went down. viacom comcast crushed down 6%. concern about what are they going to do at nbc u can they participant no does it mean less length because discovery has so many cable channels and can dictate terms? lot of wireless. who knows. nothing performed well yesterday, jim and at&t today is looking to not perform well i want to get back to discovery though because, you know, some questions there about well, what's the product really going to look like we spent a lot of time with them yesterday talking about those questions. some questioning the synerg

. >> now you're john stankey less than a year into your deal, into your tenure as ceo, you see direct, it's a wasting asset, and you say you know what, let's get somebody else to manage, it we'll still, maybe one day it can merge with dish and create some value but we're not going to do that deal, we won't deal with charlie, let somebody else and with the shareholders, they will have an ability to participate should things come back and you move and you say how much i love warner and hbo, there is so much cheap capital and so much technological evolution in my core business of wireless and 5g and what's going to happen, i need capital, i don't have enough. i just spent 30 billion on that auction, and what am i going to do i can't fund the direct to consumer business the way i need to without taking from the other business and losing potentially my competitive position and so you do what you have to do by doing this, giving your shareholders an opportunity to participate in the potential success of this business, outside of your orbit and obviously, you give yourself a new capital stru

listen, if anybody is up for it, it's zaslav and most importantly, john stankey, the man who decided to do this at at&t believed that discovery and zaslav were the right partner. they looked at other potential partners and considered other potential partners he said this is the right one. i don't know if we have time for it but we could listen to mr. stankey explain their decision-making. i don't think we do. we do, i'm sorry take a listen to stankey and why he did settle on zaslav. >> this is the right one after looking at tons of options it's the right one because of the complementary nature of the content with very limited overlap. it was a great way for us to do a big cut at the capital structure within at&t to get it right so the communications company can in fact grow and we can invest appropriately my job is to make sure this came out on balance right for the at&t shareholder in aggregate, and i think we did that here i'm really pleased about that. >> interesting, sara if you think about viacom, their balance sheet probably not up to it you had somebody who's got significant v