Word: warner
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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...
...chairman Robert Pitofsky now had a hand to play, a sudden and broad public mandate to go after both companies. "In January you couldn't have found a lawyer in Washington who would have questioned this deal," says Richard Parsons, Time Warner's president. "It turned into an unbelievable and frustrating course...
Initially, the concern was that Time Warner would give AOL preferential or exclusive access to its cable network. That would disadvantage other Internet service providers, all of whom are looking to cable as the most versatile broadband delivery alternative. Companies like Disney complained that in addition to limiting open access, the new company might restrict interactive TV (ITV) services over TW cable. Then a roster of instant-messaging companies charged that AOL was preventing any competitor's messages from penetrating AOL's proprietary IM architecture. By the fall, when AOL Time Warner had initially estimated they would close the deal...
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...