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Photorealistic scene of two businessmen in suits examining documents and looking at monitors in a modern office.

Photorealistic scene of two businessmen in suits examining documents and looking at monitors in a modern office.

In 2016, amid speculation of another activist investor takeover and rumored push to spin-off HBO to better compete with Netflix, it was announced that telecommunications company AT&T was going to purchase Time Warner. The deal was held up until 2018 as a result of the Department of Justice suing to block the merger on antitrust grounds.note Ultimately, a court ruled in AT&T's favor and the purchase was allowed to proceed. Upon the deal closing, Time Warner was renamed to WarnerMedia. AT&T began to reorganize the newly-rebranded company in an effort to prevent the infighting that had plagued it and to increase synergy. For example, Toonami, [adult swim]'s anime and action programming block, has been collaborating with anime streaming service Crunchyroll on acquisitions and co-productions. A new flagship streaming service, HBO Max, was launched in 2020 to offer content from all of WarnerMedia's brands directly to consumers. As the Warner acquisition left them as one of the most indebted companies in the country, AT&T became committed to selling off many non-core assets from its own portfolio. note In August 2020, WarnerMedia announced a second restructuring in an effort to devote its resources to streaming. Under this structure, the studios and networks were fully consolidated into one entity, while HBO Max became a separate operating unit that also included their international operations. The restructuring came as a result of an executive shakeup that stemmed from AT&T's Ver mais