Posted on 01/30/2003 6:37:03 AM PST by snopercod
The flamboyant career of the man who invented 24-hour cable news, Ted Turner, ended yesterday when he quit as vice-chairman of the AOL Time Warner media group after it announced a $US98.7 billion ($167 billion) annual loss - the largest in US corporate history.
Mr Turner, who once said he wanted to be America's "conscience", said he wanted to devote more time to philanthropic interests and "several socially responsible business efforts".
The CNN founder said yesterday: "I have not come to this decision lightly ... As you know, this company has been a significant part of my life for over 50 years."
However, AOL Time Warner said Mr Turner is expected to remain on its board.
AOL Time Warner's losses stem from write-downs in the company's assets, reflecting the $US100 billion in value that has been wiped from its share price in the past 18 months.
The scale of the losses underscores how much value has evaporated from what once was the largest and most heralded merger in corporate history, the ultimate marriage between old and new media.
Mr Turner's resignation ends a remarkable media journey. Starting out with 250 employees working out of an old clubhouse in Atlanta, Georgia, he transformed news broadcasting.
For many, the cable station's high point was its coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, when two of its correspondents reported live to the world from a Baghdad hotel room as the bombs rained down.
That year Time magazine named Mr Turner its man of the year, saying that under his direction the very definition of news had been rewritten - "from something that has happened to something that is happening at the very moment you are hearing of it ... A war involving the fiercest air bombardment in history unfolded in real time - before the cameras ..."
Mr Turner sold the business to Time Warner in 1996 but fiercely opposed the latter's merger with AOL, announced in January 2000.
The acquisition was predicted to reshape the corporate landscape for companies as diverse as Disney, the US telecom giant AT&T and Microsoft.
The plan was to open AOL's subscriber base, and hundreds of millions of internet users, to Time Warner movies, music and publications, but the going proved harder than expected.
AOL, the new-economy dynamo, failed to live up to the dotcom hype or the inflated share price that financed the purchase.
The portents of disaster came when the company revealed that the revenues and subscriber numbers for its online business fell for the first time last year. Only "stellar performances" at Time Warner propped up the group's sales, it said.
Impressive legacy...
In the loooooong run of history, Turner he didn't transform anything -- he is a failure.
In the loooooong run of history, Turner didn't transform anything -- he is a failure.
Turner deserves part of the blame for agreeing to the merger but after that he had no input on the running of AOL/TW.
Non existant
Well, he's not dead yet.
All the reports say he wants
to arrange to buy
back CNN from
AOL. He could be like
Steve Jobs and Apple --
There, gone and then back.
In a free market, often
companies rather
die doing something
"acceptable," rather than
thrive doing what works.
That does not make a damned difference. The audience, including you and me, have no need to watch the biased Communist News Network.
So? People do what
they want to do, not what they
need to do. That's why
the comparison
to Steve Jobs is so fitting.
No one on earth needs
to buy an Apple.
But enough people want to,
to keep Jobs wealthy.
Enough liberals
would rally around Turner
back at CNN
to spike the ratings
and make it look like Turner's
a big time hero.
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