Word: levins
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...with Time Warner's stock having been among the biggest dogs in media since Lassie, Levin has thrown the dice again--and this time rolled a Ted. As in Turner. Time Warner's merger with Turner Broadcasting, sealed last week, makes the company the biggest in media, with unconsolidated sales of $21 billion. Time Warner--with holdings in film and television (including Warner Bros., HBO and Cinemax), publishing (including TIME, Book of the Month Club and Little, Brown Publishers) and music (including the Atlantic and Elektra labels)--adds to its roster such gold-plated assets...
...with that comes the rambunctious Robert Edward Turner. The question bounding around the new company is, What does Ted want? He certainly wants an active role in management, as he made clear in forcing Levin to carve out a fourth operating division for him that includes Time Warner's HBO and Cinemax, besides CNN and the other former Turner Broadcast properties. His game plan might include lifting the company's stock price by selling off assets, cutting debt and pressing for lower costs. "Ted is magic," says fellow industry maven Glenn Jones, CEO of Jones Intercable. "He can do things...
...since Time Warner was formed, its stock has trailed the market badly, up 32% while the Standard & Poor's index has risen 100%. The merger may help. Time Warner rose 5.7% last week, to $41.75. Part of that may be due to Turner's advent, but it also reflects Levin's promise that he's ready to purge the company's onerous level of indebtedness...
...Levin has been in love with cable for decades and is loath to give it up, but he is under pressure from his board of directors to do so. "Cable is the key issue--it's the only issue," says a source close to the board. In Levin's thinking, by marrying content, such as films and television, with distribution--networks and cable systems--Time Warner will always have an outlet for its products. The Turner deal is an extension of that thinking...
...Levin's critics think it's only a matter of months before Turner exerts full authority. But some of these same critics were certain that the Turner deal would never go through. The fact is, Levin and Turner are cable-industry cronies who could conceivably pair well together. Certainly, Levin is a survivor. He has outlived one boss and outplotted a co-CEO, dumped executives and board members who didn't buy his vision and hung around long enough to pull off the deal he's always wanted. But the question remains: Will the company of his dreams prove...