Word: levins
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From the start, Case and Levin not unreasonably insisted that open access was integral to their companies' success. Why would Time Warner, which controls 20% of the nation's cable subscribers, close off competitors' access to its cable resources and risk its own access to the other 80% of the market? But after the Disney debacle, that sort of logic carried no weight...
While Washington weighed the merger's fate, AOL and Time Warner confidently, or arrogantly, carried on one of history's most extensive premerger integration efforts. The same week that the ABC controversy erupted, Levin and Case announced a new corporate structure, with Case as chairman; Levin as CEO; and Parsons and Robert Pittman, a veteran of AOL (and Time Warner), as co-chief operating officers...
Pittman has emerged as the battlefield commander, with what many view as an insurmountable goal: to shape Time Warner's disparate, shark-infested corporate divisions and AOL's single-minded Internet entrepreneurs into a lean, mean conquering force. Although Levin insisted that the new headquarters be in New York, the cost was the defenestration of much of Time Warner's corporate staff. Many of the top executive roles have gone to AOL. Middle managers from the two companies have clashed over, among other things, ad-sales strategies and Time Warner's compensation structure. "A lot of [AOL executives] came...
...measure of success, of course, is whether AOL Time Warner can meet the stratospheric financial goals Case and Levin set a year ago, when they promised Wall Street that in 2001 the company's operating profit would grow by 30%, to $11 billion. Despite the Internet downturn, AOL's growth this year is still an impressive 23% (the company is adding about 1 million subscribers every six weeks). But Time Warner's growth is beginning to slow. The movie and music businesses are troubled. And if economic doldrums hit next year, ad revenues are likely to take a hit. "They...
...mergers often fail (see DaimlerChrysler and AT&T/TCI). In a staff memo just days after the merger was announced, Case and Levin asserted that the new company would "fundamentally change the way people communicate." That's a tall order. And no matter how hot the paradigm or how far and fast the technology reaches, AOL Time Warner is still in the business of satisfying finicky consumers, who want content from everybody, for nothing if possible. It will take more than synergy for this new Internet-age media colossus to succeed. And as Case and Levin would be the first...