Extremely smart people are betting billions of their own and investors' money on the chance they can become players in that future world. Many will succeed. Most will not. Just because you're big doesn't mean you're going to succeed. Time Warner, its riches aside, became the bartered bride in this marriage because not enough investors believed its executives knew what they were doing.
Some huge mergers are successful.
More prove to be a bust. Putting these huge conglomerates together means more than just merging their cultures. The guys at the top will have to demonstrate they have the attention span to keep abreast of many very different businesses. Time Warner holds a valuable asset in its ownership of cable TV pipelines into millions of homes. Those electronic pipelines can deliver not only scheduled movies and TV programs but much faster Internet access and the ability to buy or rent movies, music or anything else your attention span desires when you want it.