Turner quits as AOL Time Warner posts massive loss

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | January 30, 2003 | Colin Kruger

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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.

[gg188]

He gave ONE billion to the UN.

His company destroyed ONE HUNDRED BILLION in wealth and assets of investors.

I hope that some of the investors sue him for the UN billion to compensate for a small part of their loss.

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ROFL! m-o-o-o-o-o-o-O-O-O-O-H-H-H-H!!!