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Necessity mothered the merger of AOL and Time Warner. TIME.com's new $350 billion parent company - AOL Time Warner - was unveiled Monday after the giants of the Internet and of traditional media negotiated the biggest merger in history. Each side had something the other badly needed: Time Warner recognizes that the future of an infotainment company is digital, but its attempts to stake its own claim on Internet real estate - a competitive CNN news site, an innovative Warner Brothers product and the failed Time Warner "Pathfinder" network - were unable to create the dominant presence the corporation enjoys in other media...
...AOL, the dowry is not only Time Warner's news-and-entertainment empire, but also its cable television infrastructure, which will prove invaluable if the Virginia-based juggernaut is to dominate the next, broadband phase of Internet development as comprehensively as it has ruled the current era. "Time Warner's cable distribution system is unmatched," says Saporito. "And now those fat pipes are going to be pumping AOL...
...that they really don't work very well. So the success of this one is far from guaranteed." The two sides also had to do some bargaining on valuation. In the end, the deal was this: Time Warner shareholders will be given 1.5 shares in the new entity, while AOL's will get a one-for-one swap. That gives AOL stockholders 55 percent of the new company, which will be headed up by Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, and gives Time Warner equity a shot in the arm. After all, before the merger AOL's market capitalization had been...
...future? Assuming it survives any regulatory challenges, the move will inevitably set off a rash of media-Internet marriages as competitors of both AOL and Time Warner reposition themselves to challenge the new corporation. Wall Street certainly thinks so; even as Time Warner stock spent the early trading going up, up, up (at one point reaching 102 before settling in at around 90-plus), stocks for a number of Internet and media companies, such as Lycos and Disney, also shot up on the news. As the process unfolds, the merger of news and entertainment of the past decade will...
...turns out they know about something far more exciting than sex: money. Orgies are great and all, but they're a little early '99, a little Eyes Wide Shut, if you know what I mean. If I find a woman who can point me toward the next AOL, then I'm a man in search of a diamond ring...