Word: aol
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...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...
...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...