I just don't understand how it's legal and the fact these feggits are happy about it because they get their superhero shit pisses me the fuck off
Why wouldn't it be legal? Disney is specifically
not buying the Fox network or any Fox owned television stations. (Also, News Corp wants to keep them...and some of this probably has to be due to the NFL contract.) Only the film production arm and cable networks are going. None of this creates a monopoly or anti-trust situation of any kind under any form of American law that I can tell, they aren't even growing their already outsized power in the Hollywood film studio "market" which is a stupid thing for the government to regulate in the first place. The cable networks they're dumping technically only exist in carriage agreements. And especially in regards to superhero films, and doubly especially since Disney owns Marvel anyway so they're effectively buying back their own film rights. They aren't even buying Fox's studio properties apparently, only the back catalog. (No idea if they bought options on the employee contracts, I have to imagine they'd want first call on Fox Animation staff.)
Disney actually doesn't really even care about any of that, except the Fox back catalog, as much as they care about STAR, Sky, Endemol and Fox International. I'd argue that even the part they want in the U.S. is the part Fox will be holding onto for some time. They won't be able to gather up all the Fox Sports rights into ESPN for years to come and at a huge price anyhow because those deals usually preclude it. They'll be paying Fox to air their productions until those deals come up and they resign them for ESPN. Fox couldn't even dump the Big Ten Network on them because that deal is locked until 2032 and it now includes a broadcast deal regarding football. Five years ago Fox would have probably paid Disney to take that. (And this was the rumor about Fox Sports' massive expansion regionally and locally at the same time it was killing off Fox Sports nationally because it was a money sink. That it was trying to acquire rights to sell to ESPN.)
If anything News Corp bringing Fox into the fold, which is assumed to be coming, steps on far more regulatory toes due to the outdated laws about publishing and broadcast. (The current News Corp is officially a new company, the old News Corporation was renamed 21st Century Fox and is what Disney is buying large chunks of.)
edit: since I mentioned them below and they're being compared, the AT&T/Time Warner deal is somewhat different, as I mentioned Disney is not buying Fox's broadcast network
nor any of its broadcast systems in the U.S., Disney is basically only purchasing content. AT&T wants the content
and the broadcasting, which is them doubling up in the same regulated industry, but Time Warner doesn't own much overseas (Fox owned assets form the largest broadcaster outside the U.S. iirc) which is why the EU approved the deal but the Trump Administration is suing. Fox has spent months trying to convince foreign regulators to let it sell its foreign broadcasting to Disney. The U.K.'s regulators, for example, are seemingly indicating they're going to be okay with this deal if only because Rupert Murdoch is giving up Sky, which they've been slowing him taking over fully. (Presumably so he could include it in this. Though apparently he's working things a bit like Fox Sports, holding onto some of Sky Sports which is already in News Corp, not Fox.)
