Practicalmadness

Wired is running this brief piece that raises a couple of good points and generally puts it all into perspective. Puts what into perspective? I'm glad you asked: AOL Time Warner (motto: "If you enjoy it, we probably own it") yesterday reported a net loss of almost $100 billion for fiscal 2001, as well as the resignation of vice chairman Ted Turner. (NY Times; free registration required.)

Poor Ted Turner. (Well, not poor poor -- you know what I mean.) He built a media empire from scratch, and there were rumors that Time Warner's management tried to oust him when TW and Turner merged back in 1998.

But he held on, even sticking with the company through its ludicrous merger with AOL and the general crappification of AOL-TW's products and such insane management decisions as switching the entire corporation's e-mail to good old AOL. (If this doesn't seem like a blunder worthy of note, just think: this is what AOL TW's management was worrying about when they should have been focused on making, you know, money?)

It must make Turner cry to watch what Steve Case and company have done to CNN. Well, not cry cry, but you know what I mean.

It occurs to me to wonder what this might do to some AOL-owned movies still in development, like The Return of the King and Matrix 2 and 3. Probably not, because those budgets were probably set in stone a year ago. But those in the boardroom are probably rooting for New Line and Joel Silver a lot more this morning than they were yesterday.

Also on the horizon: some analysts and shareholders are calling for a more complete denial of this AOL debacle by returning to TW's original name and ticker symbol (Wired News), crafting the illusion that TW swallowed AOL and not the other way around.