Book Review: "Media Man" by Ken Auletta -- From Network to Nowhere (Ted Turner)

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 21, 2004 | NOAH OPPENHEIM

[OESY]

While Ted Turner was in college, his father wrote him a letter that concluded: "I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass." Anyone who has watched the eccentric billionaire over the years might be inclined to admire Dad's prescience....

Far from self-made, Mr. Turner inherited a large billboard business when his father, with whom he had a troubled relationship, committed suicide....

He had been less lucky in 1985 when, without consulting his board, he bought MGM for $1.5 billion. He overpaid and was drowning in debt. Three months later he sold the studio back at a discount. More damaging, he was forced to cede partial ownership and control of his company to a consortium of cable operators in exchange for a cash bailout....

A recurring theme of Mr. Auletta's book is that media executives are just as human as the rest of us -- equally prone to make lousy decisions. And Mr. Turner is not his only example. A good chunk of "Media Man" tells the story of the ill-fated AOL Time Warner. Mr. Auletta argues that Mr. Levin embraced the merger largely for confused personal reasons. After his son was murdered in 1997, he hungered for a larger purpose in his life. He saw in the Internet the promise of social transformation. Mr. Auletta contends that the other players were similarly driven by factors that had nothing to do with good business: "vanity, pride, power, panic, publicity, greed."

In the aftermath of the merger, Mr. Turner was sidelined, with no choice but to watch angrily as 75% of his net worth was obliterated as one "synergy" after another failed to materialize. Here Mr. Auletta sympathizes with Mr. Turner and echoes his newly announced conviction that media companies have simply grown too large....

[OESY]

Mr. Oppenheim is a television producer in Los Angeles.

Ted Turner's rise and fall. Moguls are as prone
to bad decisions as the rest of us.

Ken Auletta's "Media Man"
(Enterprise, 205 pages, $22.95).

Note:
I recently heard Auletta (now with New Yorker magazine)
speak and was disappointed at his rhetoric denouncing
Bush, the War on Terror, FoxNews, and corporations.
Had he more time, I'm sure we would have been treated
to a diatribe against profits and western civilization.
Auletta is a slick and masterful propagandist
for liberal causes.

[pipecorp]

Didn't we determine that eating cheese increases one's prescient abilities. Clearly ted's old man ate the cheese. But I knew this was in the offing anyway. :^}

[Savage Beast]

Ted may have inherited the business from his father, but he had to fight for it, against overwhelming odds and older and more experienced men who outnumbered him, when he was in his early twenties. He succeeded because he was courageous and formidably intelligent.

[Minute Swat]

"He succeeded because he was courageous and formidably intelligent."

Or he used Martha Stewart tactics - the ole' stab in ye back!

[GOPJ]

Father knows best:

While Ted Turner was in college, his father wrote him a letter that concluded: "I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass." Anyone who has watched the eccentric billionaire over the years might be inclined to admire Dad's prescience....

[GOPJ]

ping