'Game of Thrones' to Be Available Only to AT&T Customers?

AT&T's top priority is "getting the Time Warner deal done," chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said Tuesday, adding that "we spend most of our waking hours" on that.

Speaking at the 45th Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston, he said: "Time Warner changes the game. We now have the ability, and we are actually putting in place plans now, to begin curating Time Warner content uniquely for a mobile environment. You can think of all the great franchises in Time Warner and what we will be able to do, and we are now working to stand up [advertising-based models].”

The telecom giant late last year agreed to acquire Time Warner for $85.4 billion, and the CEO on Tuesday was questioned about the possible benefits of combining content and distribution businesses, including some critics' concerns that AT&T could keep popular Time Warner networks or content away from rivals and offer them exclusively on its own platforms.

Stephenson said that after the deal nothing would change about trying to get out content, such as HBO's or CNN's, to as many people as possible. "You create value in a media/entertainment with broad, deep distribution," he said, adding that "you want HBO on every device on every device." And he emphasized: "You can't think about taking [HBO's] Game of Thrones, and you only are going to make it available to AT&T customers, that's crazy – you'd destroy the value of the media/entertainment business."

Read the rest of this article at The Hollywood Reporter.

Game of Thrones stars Kit Harrington and Peter Dinklage.