Word: aol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...other words, we have a new (and French) vertically integrated media behemoth. The small group of big companies - AOL Time Warner, Disney, Fox - fighting not only to produce but deliver their sports, music, movies, TV shows and "interactive programming" to the U.S. couch potatoes that love them has a new member. Just a year after swallowing Universal Studios (and its theme parks), the former French water utility now figures it's ready to, in the words of former Fox TV creator Diller, "compete in the first tier of entertainment...
...they're going to try to do it with satellite. Why? Vivendi chairman Jean-Marie Messier settled on EchoStar-Hughes (which owns DirecTV) for the same reason Rupert Murdoch wanted Hughes before EchoStar moved in. Most of the nation's cable lines are in the hands of rivals like AOL Time Warner (parent company of this writer) and half-rivals like AT&T Broadband and Comcast who have plenty of content-distribution deals already inked - making reasonably priced access via cable into the U.S. couch-potato market hard to find. Making EchoStar-DirecTV and its control of 90 percent...
...cable guy has his weak spots. Despite the best efforts of AOL, AT&T and the like, cable networks are still diverse and geographically splintered - 7,500 of them have less than 3,000 subscribers - while satellite is a unified nationwide network as soon as you pull the dish out of the box. And while satellite-TV service, with an average rate of $27 a month (plus the dish), is still more than the $16 for analog cable, digital cable averages $49 a month. EchoStar knows full well that cable rates have gone up 35 percent since...
...JERRY LEVIN AND STEVE CASE Given the big egos of CEOs, it's no surprise that when companies merge, one boss usually departs. But since the creation of AOL TIME WARNER in January 2000, chairman Steve Case, 43, and CEO Jerry Levin, 62, have shown a unity of purpose at odds with the B-school case studies. It helps that they share a vision: subscriptions. Add up AOL, cable TV and magazines, and they have 137 million people mailing in payments. This year the duo clung for too long to profit promises they couldn't keep. But as they direct...
Liberty Media is an oddball idea. It's John Malone's collection of both public and private media-content businesses. It's at $11.50, and there's probably $10 worth of publicly traded stock in his collection of assets, including AOL Time Warner, Sprint, Motorola and News Corp. He also has about $10 a share worth of private companies like Discovery Channel and QVC. The list is as long as your...