Word: aol
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eisner is, of course, the guy who led the charge against AOL Time Warner at the FTC. And ironically, his case would not have had nearly as much resonance if Time Warner had not committed what one of its own executives calls "the stupidest business decision of the year." On May 1, after months of wrangling with Disney over a new retransmission contract for Disney's ABC television stations, Time Warner Cable shut the network off its system in New York City, Houston and Los Angeles...
Newspaper editorials decried the move as Orwellian. From Disney and Microsoft to a lowly Internet service provider in Oshkosh, Wis., competitors began turning up the heat. Separately, press accounts of AOL's take-no-prisoners approach to its business partners made the Internet entrepreneurs seem as predatory as the cable guys. By this fall, even the American Civil Liberties Union was claiming that the new company could be dangerous...
Initially, the concern was that Time Warner would give AOL preferential or exclusive access to its cable network. That would disadvantage other Internet service providers, all of whom are looking to cable as the most versatile broadband delivery alternative. Companies like Disney complained that in addition to limiting open access, the new company might restrict interactive TV (ITV) services over TW cable. Then a roster of instant-messaging companies charged that AOL was preventing any competitor's messages from penetrating AOL's proprietary IM architecture. By the fall, when AOL Time Warner had initially estimated they would close the deal...
While Washington weighed the merger's fate, AOL and Time Warner confidently, or arrogantly, carried on one of history's most extensive premerger integration efforts. The same week that the ABC controversy erupted, Levin and Case announced a new corporate structure, with Case as chairman; Levin as CEO; and Parsons and Robert Pittman, a veteran of AOL (and Time Warner), as co-chief operating officers...
Pittman has emerged as the battlefield commander, with what many view as an insurmountable goal: to shape Time Warner's disparate, shark-infested corporate divisions and AOL's single-minded Internet entrepreneurs into a lean, mean conquering force. Although Levin insisted that the new headquarters be in New York, the cost was the defenestration of much of Time Warner's corporate staff. Many of the top executive roles have gone to AOL. Middle managers from the two companies have clashed over, among other things, ad-sales strategies and Time Warner's compensation structure. "A lot of [AOL executives] came...