Word: aol
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...blitzkrieg with which Levin deposed his predecessor, N.J. Nicholas Jr., "betting against Jerry Levin in a boardroom struggle would be a big mistake." Especially when, as in this case, it would take a 75% vote of the board--to consist, initially, of equal numbers of Time Warner directors and AOL directors--to dump...
...typical Time Warner manager, especially in its entertainment divisions, would never be mistaken for St. Francis of Assisi. But the deal-a-minute, scream-until-you-win culture of AOL is not likely to tolerate the stately pace of a company whose decision-making arteries are often clogged with consultants and task forces. California venture capitalist Jennifer Fonstad anticipates that the slightest whiff of old-economy culture in the halls of Dulles will create "a huge opportunity for headhunting. I can't underscore how excited many of us are at the prospect of getting good AOL executives and engineers...
...process of--pick your noun--either education or spin. Music-business executive Danny Goldberg, a former head of Warner Bros. records, says the merger both "validates the Internet and validates the value of content." But it also forces the invention of a new currency to reflect it; as the AOL and TWX stock prices yo-yoed up and down last week, it was clear that investors had no idea how to put a price tag on something that was neither an Internet highflyer nor an old-economy cash-flow locomotive. AOL lost about 20% of its value before recovering...
Along the way, there's business to be done. New media buccaneers refer to their easiest challenges as "low-hanging fruit," and in the merger announcement the two companies listed a series of efforts that would launch immediately: CNN.com programming featured on AOL services; AOL discs stuffed into Time Warner product shipments; cross-promotion of Warner Bros. movies on AOL-owned MovieFone. If none of these seems especially delicious, that's because low-hanging fruit rarely...
Within a year expect major initiatives in broadband, where AOL visionaries see their eventual future, and in recorded music, an area that has been less gold mine than minefield for Time Warner in the past few years. "We can change the way people interact with music, change the distribution medium," says Jonathan Sacks, the senior vice president who supervises the main AOL service. Contemplate a music company that no longer has to bother manufacturing or shipping CDs, or sharing revenue with retailers--one that distributes its music directly from its hard drive to yours...