TWX

Communication was by phone — or speakerphone for a group — and TWX, a telex machine.

District Judge Richard Leon on Thursday authorized AT&T Inc. T 0.93% to complete its purchase of Time Warner Inc., TWX 0.84% after the Justice Department decided not to request a delay that would have held up the combination.

It was bleeped on air, but ran online, and set off a scramble inside Time Warner Inc., TWX 1.80% the network’s parent company.

This battle with tech companies was Time Warner ’s TWX 3.61% primary argument in favor of its acquisition by AT&T. As a result, Steve Jobs’s famous deathbed promise to reinvent broadcast TV hasn’t happened.

Judge Richard J. Leon, in his 172-page opinion Tuesday, allowed AT&T Inc.’s T 0.50% proposed merger with Time Warner Inc., TWX 0.05% to go through, over objections by the U.S.