TimeWarner and AOL fell in love back in 2000, when “You Got Mail” said by a computer was considered awesome and dial up was the norm. The merger was a 111 billion dollar transaction and marked the beginning of a digital revitalization for the TimeWarner print based company. The plan for the conglomeration consisted of AOL providing the 56K pipeline for mountains Time Warner content. On Last night’s airing of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer media watchers also contributed the fallout to a lack of “synergy” and prevalent “culture shock”. Evidently, the young “hip” AOL had trouble adapting to the traditional TimeWarner business model.
The media implication for this separation is massive. Its like one of the six couples on the media block are splitting half of all their shit and ones moving out. More than that, the house is in major disrepair. Should T.M. continue to collapse, we could be left with only 5 media companies controlling most of our information or even worse, a buyout that keep the name alive but has another major behind the wheel.
Interesting stuff-
1998 movie bearing the title You Got Mail was produced by Warner Brothers before the merger. AOL still has 6 million dial up customers.
