Word: aol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...What do U.S. couch potatoes get, besides the five extra channels of Baywatch reruns and "The Mummy Returns"? Well, maybe a wake-up call for the cable guy. Vertically unchallenged AOL, for instance, might hurry up with long-promised goodies like (Warner Brothers) movies on demand (in Time Warner cable homes). Or Cablevision, which raised rates in suburban New York by 12 percent last year alone, might slow down on the price hikes. Or they might both sic their lobbyists on Washington - Murdoch will come along for the ride - and bust up the EchoStar-DirecTV union, putting satellite TV back...
Gerald Levin's carefully laid plans for filling his shoes almost fell apart last May. Richard Parsons, one of Levin's two deputies and the man he wanted to succeed him as CEO of AOL Time Warner, was being avidly recruited to be CEO of food-and-tobacco giant Philip Morris. In a car ride back from a corporate retreat at the Hilton Rye Town, in the New York City suburbs, Levin urged his protege to stay...
...promised to lobby the board of directors to make Parsons CEO of AOL Time Warner. The sweetener: Levin confided that he didn't intend to serve out the two years left on his contract. In fact, Levin had quietly inserted a provision allowing him to step down on just six months' notice. Not only might Parsons become the first African American to lead the world's most influential media company--he might take over very soon...
Levin, 62, kept his word last week in an announcement that caught the business world--including top executives at AOL Time Warner--by surprise. He announced that in May he will step down from his CEO post and from the board, and Parsons, 53, will replace him. Parsons has for 18 months split the job of chief operating officer with Robert Pittman, 47, who will now hold that post outright...
...which they are well suited by experience and temperament: the good-humored, diplomatic Parsons at the helm; the disciplined, hard-driving Pittman in the engine room. It also represents Levin's parting imprint on the culture of the merged company. And it has investors wondering how Parsons will lead AOL Time Warner, which has lost much credibility for clinging too long to unrealistic promises about how much it can earn in a sagging economy...