AOL wants separation from Time Warner

[phoebe]

America Online is asking AOL Time Warner Inc. to drop "AOL" from its name, concerned that negative publicity about the parent is hurting the online service's efforts to right itself.

America Online CEO Jonathan Miller told his staff in an e-mail Monday that "AOL" the online service was becoming confused with "AOL" as shorthand for the world's largest media company.

"I believe it's time for us to get our brand back," Miller said. "Any controversy or criticism involving the corporate entity has actually hit our consumer brand."

Executives from the Time Warner side of the company have been agitating for such a change for months, but Miller stressed that it was his idea to propose that AOL be dropped from the corporate name.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/4036934.html

[kainah]

1. When that merger went through

I kept saying it was the stupidest, most ridiculous thing I had ever heard of. I don't know anything about mergers & acquisitions or high finance or anything special about the communications industry. But it was just stupid on its face. Now, I keep hearing people say, "Well, no one knew ..." and I wave my hands frantically but no one seems to acknowledge my great wisdom. :shrug:

[PeakOil2008]

2. Same here...

As much as it was hyped, I knew the AOL Time Warner merger was doomed to fail from the very beginning. If anything, Time Warner should've bought out AOL, and not the other way around. Time Warner was a solid, established media company, while AOL was little more than an oversized, overglorified ISP. The merger was the absolute pinnacle of DotCom stupidity.

Steve Case made off like a bandit... well, at least for a little while. He deserved to be ousted from the company earlier this year for his charade. The shareholders lost more than two-thirds of their investment when the stock tanked. Maybe worse than that is the fact that Ted Turner lost control of CNN in the process, hence its drift rightward.

[samsingh]

3. and you were right

$100Billion of equity gone

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. AOL SUCKS

[htuttle]

5. He said, She said...they're still at the 'blame stage'

Executives from the Time Warner side of the company have been agitating for such a change for months, but Miller stressed that it was his idea to propose that AOL be dropped from the corporate name.

In LBN earlier, another thread about this told basically the same story, that AOL was getting dropped from the 'AOL Time Warner' name, but for different reasons:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=61349

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AOL Time Warner Inc. is considering dropping "AOL" from its name, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday, against the backdrop of federal probes and declining finances at the media company's America Online unit.

(snip)

The AOL unit is the target of government investigations into accounting of its advertising deals. AOL Time Warner shares have declined by two-thirds since the deal closed.

All I can say to this is: Hey you guys -- sometimes, corporate mergers just don't work out. Who knows why... Maybe you rushed into things, swept up in rush of easy profits. Maybe your corporate cultures just aren't compatible.

But don't go through an ugly, drawn out, corporate divorce. Nobody wants to see your financials hauled out into public. Think about the employees!

The point is, you just have to return each other's corporate record collections and move on. Make a clean break of it -- I know, you'll say that you'll still retain interlocking boards of directors for awhile, but over time, your contacts will diminish.

Get past it, and give yourself some time to restructure...

[wellst0nev0ter]

6. Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

Oh wait, AOL is still going to be a cancer growing out the side of TimeWarner, they just don't want to share the responsibilities of identities anymore.

F**k AOL.

[RTC]

7. That's funny: I thought it was the other way around...

When I first heard the story about dropping AOL from the name, I assumed that it was Time-Warner's idea. Seemed like a reasonable thing to do.