The current economic climate has all but put the kabash on big time media deals, but that hasn't kept Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes from fantasizing about them. In Bewkes' dream world, there is a peacock running around on a farm, and the farmhands know the peacock is special, but it's eating up too much food without shedding enough magical peacock feathers, and Bewkes comes along to visit the farm's owners and ends up stuffing the peacock in a burlap sack and running away with it all the way to headquarters. Ya follow? CONTINUED »
Taking a cue from the zombie-aliens in They Live, Amazon and TiVo teamed up to present to you the easiest way to become a mindless drone in a system of rampant consumerism.
Introducing Buy. It. Now.:
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Finally, something interesting about The Weather Channel – and not about it's crazy global warming disbelieving founder John Coleman – that NBC Univeral is trying to buy for $5 billion: NBC Universal might not get to buy it.
Time Warner has announced its intention on buying the property from Landmark Communications. Except they're going to be "extremely price disciplined and price sensitive." Uh, okay. Let's make it simpler for you: NBC is offering $5 billion, and you'll have to beat that. Simple enough?
(Oh, you'll also inherit a sexual harassment lawsuit, but whatevs, right?)
"Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes spent a good 45 minutes talking about weighty issues about digital media, social networking, the future of AOL, etc, at the D conference today. The first question from the audience: 'Lou Dobbs is a hateful xenophobe. Why are you employing him?'
"That's our paraphrase of Consumer Electronics Association head Gary Shapiro's query. Our paraphrase of Bewkes' response: I don't really like him, either. But hey, what are you gonna do?" [SIA]
It was like the time Viacom thought it could bilk Google out of $1 billion for copyright infringement, knowing full well its lawsuit was all but a negotiating tactic — mega corporation v. mega corporation lawsuits are filled with legalese, and little substance. But in the battle for television subscribers, Verizon doesn't look to be playing games. Its FiOS service, which delivers cable TV to the home over fiber optic wires, is a direct competitor of behemoth Time Warner's proper cable TV service. And in the battle for subscribers, Verizon alleges in a new lawsuit that Time Warner is unfairly describing its competitor in advertisements: "The lawsuit [...] alleged that the latest version of a long-running Time Warner Cable ad mocking a Verizon door-to-door salesman falsely compared Verizon's FiOS service with its own cable offering. Verizon says that Time Warner Cable's ad implies FiOS requires a satellite dish for TV service and that it isn't able to bundle together high-speed Internet, video and phone calls. The lawsuit also says the ad claims FiOS TV isn't available in New York and that Time Warner Cable's use of fiber optics predates Verizon's."
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday. How nice of YouTube's "VZBlogger," whose four YouTube videos include three Verizon ads, to have posted the Time Warner ad to YouTube just twenty hours ago so you could see how mean the bully is being!
And meanwhile, TV service isn't the only place Time Warner is unleashing the hounds against Verizon. CONTINUED »
THE FOURTH DIMENSION Failing to properly update cable boxes for daylight savings time, Time Warner screwed 1 million customers into thinking Meet The Press was starting an hour early. [NYT]
FEELING LUCKY TO BE EMPLOYED Time Warner is cutting 100 more jobs this quarter. Guess everyone will have to do more with less, or some other empty words of encouragement. [AP]
THE GLASS IS HALF FULL Time Warner is going to lay off 75 people tomorrow, one of new CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes’s first moves of effective leadership. On bright side, it was originally going to be 200. [AdAge]
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE "We are not convinced that Mr. Bewkes will immediately ‘unlock value’ through an asset divestiture" is analyst speak for, "It's Jeff Bewkes first day on the CEO job at Time Warner, and we're going to preemptively bash his plans to sell off AOL or Time Inc." [DB]
Breaking: In completely surprising news, CNBC has announced that Time Warner's "No. 1" (outgoing CEO Dick Parsons) will be replaced by…Time Warner's No. 2, Jeff Bewkes.
By sheer coincidence, the revelation—which has been common industry knowledge for the past two years—comes only days before the release of the media conglomerate's undoubtedly dismal third-quarter earnings.
In completely unrelated news, Bewkes has also long been an "outspoken critic" of the AOL-Time Warner merger that everyone hates. And according to inside sources, Bewkes is said to be considering various strategies for rebuilding the company (whose stock is currently dropped 18% since last year, and counting).
Among the most popular? Ditching AOL completely, buying an internet company (i.e. Yahoo) that doesn't suck and making Google CEO Eric Schmidt "disappear."
There’s nothing to announce yet, but Time Warner Inc. may have a new CEO as early as next week.
Richard Parsons, the current chief executive, may hand off the title to Jeffrey Bewkes, president of the company. Bewkes was responsible for changing AOL’s business focus to advertisers, instead of users. That strategy appealed to about six moms in the Midwest.
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"When it was all said and done Friday, the list of the world's largest media conglomerates, based on market cap, looked like this: News Corp. was first at $67.79 billion, followed by Time Warner ($67.32 billion), Disney ($65.62 billion), Sony ($45.29 billion), Viacom ($26.98 billion) and CBS ($21.11 billion)."
Which is a boring/financy way of saying News Corp. has officially passed Time Warner as the most valuable media company in the world. And that those Wonderbra-wearing wunderkinds over at Fox Business Network are, presumably, here to stay.
How does Time Warner go about rebranding one of its television properties that's best known for The Smoking Gun's website? That's the dilemma they faced with Court TV, which they announced in March would lose its name and focus. (With all those Judge Judy shows, who has time for moderately less sensationalized courtrooms?) Out were courts and cops, in were real-life CSI rip-offs.
So after all that hemming and hawing, what'd we end up with? CONTINUED »
Weeks after losing dynamic Chief Executive Chris Albrecht (something about creative differences, corporate restructuring and Albrecht hitting his girlfriend) HBO has finally announcement a replacement. And though Albrecht was admired for his risk-taking, "hold no punches" style of leadership, Time Warner has apparently decided to opt for "corporate stability" when choosing his successor.
As the LA Times reports:
Last month the media giant was forced to find a replacement for former Chief Executive Chris Albrecht when he was fired after assaulting his girlfriend in Las Vegas.
But instead of bringing in a creative visionary like Albrecht, the force behind such iconic programs as "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City," Time Warner promoted five senior business veterans who have worked largely behind the scenes at HBO.
In other words, they've opted to go with safe and predictable rather than "innovative, but with a lifelong history of violence."
• Only Conrad Black would call Conrad Black's fraud trial "bullshit."
• Jon Friedman is first last to recognize Charlie Gibson/ABC's success.
• World rebels against business mags. Portfolio, however, is safe.
• Turns out Time Warner shareholders are more concerned with profits than with former HBO prez's indiscretions.
• San Francisco Chronicle to get 25% worse.
• AdAge: "The print-media industry is not only filled with f–k-ups, it coddles them." Case in point, AMI's David Pecker.
• Elizabeth Spiers discusses what she would do as acting president of Time Inc. Better still, it's not part of her infamous stand-up comedy routine!
• Time Warner president may be in trouble for quietly covering up HBO prez's habit of accidentally choking the women he's screwing.
• Ron Burkle is now in another bidding war. For Stuff magazine. Seriously.
• Calling CollegeHumor "sophomoric" is like calling McDonald's "greasy." You know, because both are so delicious—in a low-brow, cheap thrills kinda way.
• Don Imus is just itching to jump back in the insult-radio saddle.
• Greta Van Susteren follows Rudy G.'s lead, challenges the Dems to debate on the fair and unbiased Fox network.
• Tommy Hilfiger is not a racist. And he's hired "outside people" to keep an eye on anyone who claims otherwise.
• Ion Media Networks, NBC Universal and hedge fund Citadel to get in bed together, feel awkward about it in the morning.
• Time Warner mags are still a drag on earnings. Fortunately, the insanely priced restaurants in the TWC more than make up for it.
• Tivo offers its customers the ability to fast forward through all the annoying commercials. Including all the annoying commercials for Tivo.
• How many over-privileged Communications majors does it take to plan an after-party for Charlotte Ronson? Answer: Who cares—as long as they're attractive.
• And finally, April showers brings…lousy ratings for CNBC.
Walk by the newsstand or flip on any of the entertainment tabloid shows and you'll see Drew Barrymore staring back at you from the cover of this week's People, where she's anointed the Most Beautiful Person of all 100 Most Beautiful Persons.
But perhaps her cover isn't an example is celebrating surface-level beauty worship as it is an example of corporate synergy.
People is published by Time Inc., which is owned by Time Warner. And guess what movie studio just put out Drew's recent flick, Music & Lyrics? That'd be Time Warner's Warner Bros. studio.
And which studio is behind Lucky You, which debuts this Friday and stars Eric Bana and, oh wait, Drew Barrymore? That'd be Warner Bros.
And what studio is behind Drew's upcoming thriller He Loves Me? Ah, yes, that'd be Warner Bros., too.
So congrats on being so beautiful, Drew. Dick Parsons is drooling.
• A Sopranos spinoff? Fuhgeddaboudit.
• Conrad Black is accused of lifting cash from a company in Chicago. So how come he's never even heard of Abe Froman?
• Who will replace Paul Steiger as WSJ's managing editor? We smell a reality show!
• 30 Rock continues to be that show you DVR, but never actually watch.
• Is Vicom's $1 billion suit against Google shortsighted? Experts say, "hello! Have you been to the Googleplex?"
• Time Warner could spin off AOL this year, despite what Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler has to say.
• Carol Burnett sues Family Guy for parodying her parody show.
While MTV is laying off staffers by the department-ful, Time Warner is generating fat stacks of cash. Well, Time Warner Cable, to be more precise, which celebrated Valentine's Day one day early with some IPO lovin'. As of today, TWC is a publicly traded company, with parent Time Warner owning the same 84 percent stake it always has. Chief Dick Parsons took the opportunity to let staffers know of the good news — which most of them won't see a penny of in the form of stock options. But hey, at least HBO onDemand is working this week.
Full memo – that, clearly, Yahoo Finance has yet to receive – after the jump.
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Editorial Director
