One hundred Billion Dollars?
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.
LOL...is this a certain type of erection I should know about?!
LOL...MUD
Railroads, highways, "information highways" --- the same in each case:
The "higher-ups" want to both build the new route infrastructure and possess every square parcel along its path; they want to direct your everything.
The problem is, that once a route infrastructure is built, the peoples' free will takes them as much, if not more, elsewhere instead.
Knowing this, after years of case study at Harvard Business School, the "higher-ups" balked at building the high-speed infrastructure.
With each balk, the developers of the technology genuflected as their once "sure thing" contracts to create the technology, failed one after another to achieve more than experimentation in the field. Hi-tech wizardry into which money poured in 1995 was Kaput! by 1998; no sale!
Well, the developers of such hi-tech stuff began to sour at, for example, Lucent, or AT&T, or SBC's temerity.
Yet some of the more independent cable infrastructure partook of enough improvements to supply hi-speed --- it has been more costly than originally expected, but in the long-term it is showing where the subscribers wish to go.
In general, there's a loss, and sometimes a big loss on the initial investment.
That was true of the car-makers early in the last century. It was true of the first steamboats (they blew up!). It was true of the first railroads (they blew up!). It was true of blimps (catastrophic). It was true of the first air travel (gravity!).
There's a large expense until some stability of the science is realized.
Then, capital gains may be realized.
It's kinda like this: The Kings of Europe say, We'll build ships if only you go to where we send them.
Huh?!
Didn't work that way.
People contracted for their own ships and went where they wanted to go.
The makers of those ships made money.
The broadband cable modem infrastructure is winning at this.
Yet the "higher-up and all too greedy owners" who keep throwing money away on gobbling up every beach where the internet surfer may visit, is losing, there.
The communications gear works; it's for sale, profitably.
The money wasted and lost, is elsewhere in the fanciful dreams of the impatient on high.
A tip: Build the highway and then watch; and then speculate conservatively.
You might get lucky enough to own a parcel where something develops.
But if you rush in for the gold at the start, you will most likely lose big to "Gold Fever."
Yeah. I wonder if Ted will ask Kofi for his $1 billion back now to pay the mortgage.
You know why this is loss is so large and so visible right now, don't you...
Great insight there. Turner might someday have his head on a spike next to Ken Lay. Thanks.
LOL!, but then there is Bill Gates...
I recommend Teddy use a stepstool for that activity.
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