Time Warner :: essays research papers

In January 2000, AOL and date Warner announced a record setting $166 Billion sawbuck merger. Referred to as the Deal of the Century the talk immediately centered on the potential synergies the fresh confederation would realize.Steve Case, announced as Chairman, championed the liking of AOL/Time Warner as the Wal-Mart of the media and entertainment industry a one-stop shop marketplace for advertisers to finish off their audience. Case envisioned fully integrated advertising campaigns with bundled AOL/Time Warner products.The idea was simple enough through a single point of contact, a marketer like Pepsi could get product placement in a major event movie, run a sweepstakes promotion on the meshing with the winner appearing in a Warner Brothers sitcom, sponsor a Warner medicament artists concert tour and distri hardlye a study print and television branding campaign.Investors applauded.AOL/Time Warners scale & grasp would give it a clear advantage over stand exclusively compe titors.Furthermore, with the integration of Time Warner, AOL, the leading ISP, with 40% of the US market, would be subject to differentiate its products with proprietary content from such established brands as deal Magazine and Sports Illustrated.Time Warner executives, in turn, saw AOL as a new distribution pipeline into consumer households that could be used to promote and extend their aggregation of brands.The deal seemed to make sense for both sides.So what went wrong?The giant question these days is Should Time Warner sell AOL? Is the familiarity stronger together or apart? Over the past year, analysts, investors and company executives have grappled with this issue.Since it helps to understand a companys past when making a decision about its future, we have structured this presentation in the following format first off we will briefly review AOL & Time Warners market positions as separate companies.Second we will cover the complex merger issues that touch on federal regu lators.And third, we will take a look at the finis directly following the mergers approval.Finally, once we have sundry(a) the full picture of the merger and its results, we will conclude with our recommendation for the companys future.Prior to merging with AOL, Time Warner, was itself the result of two boffo mega mergers. The first was in 1989 when Time-Life, a print media company, merged with Warner Communications, an entertainment company with interests in movies and music. This was subsequently followed up with the merger of turner Broadcasting Systems, Ted Turners Atlanta based company with cable properties like trinitrotoluene and CNN. These two mergers had created a powerful, vertically and horizontally integrated media company but still, something was missing.