Drew Harwell

The TV business is facing its biggest explosion of new productions in the medium’s history, sparking a billion-dollar arms race between established TV networks and a deep-pocketed insurgency of online streaming giants. That boom is reshaping the industry from Atlanta to Hollywood, where even washed-up actors are suddenly in high demand and open studio space is the holy grail, said Henrik Bastin, the executive producer of “Bosch,” a gritty cop drama on Amazon. Craftspeople, who once went months without a gig, are now fought over and recruited for shows that have become so ambitious, expensive and intricate they’re “like making a movie each week,” Bastin said. “There’s literally no studio space in the L.A. area right now. Cameras and equipment are flying off the shelves,” Bastin said. Studios, he added, are locking in every cast and crew member they can with a clear message: “Don’t go anywhere.”

Desperate for buzz and worried over their survival, those networks are spending heavily in hopes of launching a prestige franchise — a “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad” — that can captivate distracted audiences and pierce America’s increasingly saturated marketplace for must-binge TV. But the wild spending is stoking fears about whether or when TV’s financial bubble might burst. The glut of scripted dramas and comedies has dramatically boosted budgets, but it has not solved the industry’s most dire dilemma: The lack of a functioning business model for a new era of TV.

On Oct 20, Bloomberg reported that AT&T is in “informal” talks to buy the media and entertainment giant Time Warner. Now the timeline appears to be accelerating: The two companies are apparently in “advanced” talks that could lead to a deal being hammered out over the weekend. A merger between AT&T and Time Warner would be a historic deal.

For starters, it could suddenly give AT&T control over a massive number of the world's most valuable media brands. It would complete the transformation by the wireless carrier — already the nation's second-largest — into a fully-fledged entertainment powerhouse, launching an entirely new chapter in the history of the telecommunications giant. And it would be no less monumental for the rest of the communications industry, a rapidly consolidating area of business in which Internet providers are increasingly playing a central role in how consumers work and play. The tie-up could see AT&T gain ownership over a dizzying array of household names. Time Warner — not to be confused with Time Warner Cable, which sold to Charter Communications earlier this year — owns HBO, meaning that AT&T could soon have the rights to “Game of Thrones,” “Westworld,” and “True Detective." It would control some of the most successful TV content in history, such as "The Sopranos" and "The Wire." It could also benefit from all the subscription revenue from HBO, the most profitable subscription business in history, whose 130 million subscribers on cable and on HBO's online streaming app pay about $15 a month.

In 1980, in one of his first big TV interviews, Donald Trump was asked whether television was ruining politics. “It’s hurt the process very much,” Trump told NBC’s Rona Barrett.

“Abraham Lincoln would probably not be electable today because of television. He was not a handsome man, and he did not smile at all. He would not be considered to be a prime candidate for the presidency — and that’s a shame, isn’t it?”

But in the years since Trump lamented the negative effect of TV, he has embraced it like no presidential candidate in history and has even derided rival candidates he deems not telegenic. Hillary Clinton, he said, doesn’t have “a presidential look, and you need a presidential look.” While real estate made him money, TV made him famous. Trump, who has never held elected office, became a household name through television, mainly his starring role for 14 years in “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice.” The self-described “ratings machine” is as defined by television as past presidents have been defined by military or public service.