Word: warners
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Pittman and Parsons will now have to work as a team even more than they did when they shared a title. AOL Time Warner's media holdings are simply too vast and diverse for any one person to run. "This is the new format for corporate leadership, and we may be on the edge of that," says board member Fay Vincent...
...merger has gone off with surprising smoothness, but old Time Warner hands have occasionally bristled at their AOL colleagues. "Some people in the company felt like the brash new kids from Dulles were coming in, overriding our borders and changing our culture," says Parsons. One continuing concern is whether AOL Time Warner will respect the editorial integrity of CNN and the Time Inc. magazines and fund them adequately. Levin, who often invokes TIME magazine founder Henry Luce, says he regards Parsons as someone who has "the Lucean thing about journalistic independence...
Levin has been a tireless proponent of cable-TV systems as the gateway for delivering the Internet and entertainment. He has led AOL Time Warner into a battle with Comcast and Cox--both backed by Microsoft--to buy some or all of AT&T Broadband, the nation's largest cable company. But some executives and board members argue that there are ways--over telephone lines or by satellite--to reach those households without burdening AOL Time Warner with billions more in debt. Parsons is leading the AT&T talks and will have to decide what price--in dollars and regulatory...
...easy. On Friday, Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen lowered her earnings estimates for this year and next, pointing to clouds ahead. AOL is adding new subscribers at the rate of 12,800 a day--14% less than at the same time last year. AOL Time Warner is locked into a deal, made by AOL in the last days of the Internet bubble, committing it to pay at least $6.75 billion for Bertelsmann's stake in AOL Europe, an entity now valued at about $2 billion. Also troubling Cohen: "The difficulty in replicating the strategic and visionary strengths of Jerry...
...timing looks at least partly strategic. One of the shrewdest operators of his day, Levin saw an opportunity to choose his successor--and make clear that it's Time Warner, not AOL, that runs the combined company. Levin says selecting his successor was a lot like producing a Warner Bros. film. "We do all this market testing," Levin says, but "the big mistake is we don't know how to end a movie." In choosing a well-liked, up-by-the-bootstraps guy like Parsons, AOL Time Warner has fashioned a classic Hollywood ending to the Levin era. But Parsons...