Time-Warner Merger Trivia

At the time (pun intended) it was the largest corporate merger in US history. For some reason the lawyers were able to convince the shareholders that a merger of the two companies would be hugely profitable for them. Synergies would abound! Redundancies would be found! Efficiencies would know no bounds!

In fact, for a while, things went okay. But mismanagement can sometimes have a delayed effect that might take years to manifest. We’re quite in tune with that idea right now.

There’s some greater detail on Wikipedia.

All would be swell. The artistic types at Warner were assuaged knowing that CEO Steve Ross would be running the show after the merger.

Sadly, their captain fell ill and passed away less than one year after the deal was finalized. His successor would be the former CEO of Time, Inc, a fellow named Gerald Levin (emphasis on the second syllable as my dad always liked to remind me). His management style from running a publishing company, did not well-suit les artistes under the entertainment umbrella. You probably know about some of the fallout, although you may not know the story behind it.

Footnote warning: for an interesting comic book reference to the merger, check out Pepe Moreno’s 1990 graphic novel Batman: Digital Justice. As far as I know, this was one of, if not the very first, comic book created entirely on a computer. About halfway through book there is a full-page panel showing a Time magazine cover with a portrait of the Dark Knight captioned, “Is He Back?” (DC, the comic book company that holds the rights to Batman, was previously a Warner property).

Remember when Prince decided he didn’t want to be called Prince anymore? Supposedly, that was due to dissatisfaction with management directives that were somehow trickling down from corporate. Before that, it had always been, “Hey, baby, we love your stuff. You need another six months to finish the album? Take twelve.” Under Time’s direction, it was more like, “We need you to finish yesterday. Today would be nice, but you’re already late. So if you could just go ahead and…” You get the idea: Bill Lumbergh Records.

Other artists that were upset with the change in the management style included Madonna, R.E.M. and Neil Young.

Anyway, with print media withering on the vine, the divestiture of its music and amusement park assets, and the remaining valuable assets of AOL likely being sold to Microsoft, the company’s remaining worthwhile assets include the movie studio, television, and its enormous coaxial cable infrastructure.

Monday News

The operating system for the new Palm Pre, WebOS, is supposed to offer some killer apps. Apart from its wireless charging capabilities is some really intuitive functionality. Supposedly, the new device will use the calendar, which will contain the location, time, and attendees of meetings, and couple all that with your GPS location, to calculate the estimated travel time to a meeting. If the phone decides your going to be running late, it will text the attendees, let them know your running late, and give them an estimate on your arrival time. Pretty nifty.

Submarines with Windows

Economic Recovery May Be Aided By File Sharing

Social Networking
The new MySpace webmail app will have a user base outbiggened by only Yahoo! and Hotmail

Facebook music integration stalled again – this time by Warners

Startups

Gynx may be some sort of mashup of an RSS reader and Twitter. We’re not sure yet because the service is still in “pre-alpha” development. Shouldn’t there be a Greek letter for that? Omega maybe?

Youtube alternative Motionbox closes Series C funding at $6M. Connecticut VC firm Canaan Partners is listed as primary source of funding. I can imagine the pitch. “You know Youtube? This is like Youtube. Only, you can get in on the ground floor! And it’s in New York!” Hopefully, they’re not just trying to save their earlier cash investments in the project. Canaan has brought you companies like Match.com (now part of the Barry Diller empire) and DoubleClick (gobbled up by Google).

Duh, Time Warner Cable = Regional Monopoly

I had another splendid experience with Time Warner customer service the other day. Unlike my previous experiences with them, however, this call was cleverly camouflaged in competency!

They do seem to have added a new group of CSRs. That, or they’ve stepped up the training regimen at one of their call centers. Ugh, Steve Ross is rolling in his grave. How tarnished the Warner name has become!

So, the cable television package I subscribe to gives me one free premium channel. With HBO’s mid-season premier tonight, I wanted to change my free premium channel from Showtime to HBO. I conveyed this to the CSR. He replied that it would be, “no problem.” I then informed that I was moving next week and I wanted to set that up. He proceeded to take down my new address and we set up a time where I would get to take the whole day off from work to wait for a technician to show up and authorize the cable box (the box is a whole other issue I will have to post about separately).

After we were done with the relocation transaction, he asked me if there was anything else he could do. I asked him about the Showtime to HBO switch and he replied, “Oh, yeah.”

Wait, wait, wait. Typing. Holding. BRB.

“Okay, so I can’t do it right now, but I assure you that within a few hours you’ll be able to watch HBO.”

“Really? Okay, great.”

“On a scale of 1 – 10 how would you rate my service?”

“Based on my previous phone calls to Time Warner? I’d give you a 10.” Big mistake.

So the next morning I check and wouldn’t you know it, Showtime is disconnected. Know what other channel I can’t tune it? You guessed it. I call back and explain everything to the CSR.

“Oh, man. I’m sorry – when we put in a location transfer request it locks out changes to the rate plan. We can’t modify the channels until after the move date.”

After I’m settled in I’m switching to Dish Networks. I’m way beyond being tired of this crap.