-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from:http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.5/aol_merg.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.5/aol_merg.htm">AOL's Altruism Sucks: Building a Media Slug, by…</A> ----- AOL's Altruism Sucks Building a Media Slug by Peter Topolewski Not long after Steve Case and Gerald Levin announced the creation of the first "new media" monster of the "Internet Century", the CEO's of AOL and Time Warner respectively made the rounds of the "old media" companies to toot their horns. They played an ambitious but ambiguous tune, one that proclaimed their new company had the tools and means to make the world a better place. In other circumstances I might ask readers to forgive my skepticism, but I am by no means the only one harboring doubts. I can't believe Steve Case had othe r people's best interests in mind when he went after Time Warner. And I'm sure benevolence was the last thing shareholders wanted to hear him say motivated the merger. For Time Warner, the impetus for the merger was obvious enough. The wandering media giant, with more glamour on hand than sense of direction, wanted to finally make meaningful strides into the future of business. The future for now means the Internet, whether the Internet is profitable or not. For AOL the deal means two things: content and distribution. AOL can claim, rather unremarkably, to have recognized what most web users have long known: that the Internet suffers a paucity of quality content. AOL has capitalized on the absence of quality by making itself a simple access point to neutral but helpful and occasionally "fun" features. AOL's format and information are neither the best nor the worst, but they are among the easiest to access and roam through. All those people who detest AOL, particularly the technophiles, will eventually have to admit that not everyone's idea of a good time involves reading code and configuring web browsers. For those people who want to use the Internet to enhance their hobbies and make life easier, AOL offers a viable platform. Steven Case sees in Time Warner, with reams of content and a cable system to speed AOL delivery, a way to bring the AOL simplicity to movies, music, travel, magazines, health care, and finance. Very altruistic. Take This "Content" and Shove It Unfortunately for him and Levin, the problems are many. The whole deal, for example, forces one to wonder if either considered asking themselves: Does anybody really want more Time Warner products? Did AOL users really miss out on CNN's useless Princess Diana or JFK, Jr. coverage? Will the increasingly boring world of professional sports suddenly seem revitalized thanks to Sports Illustrated's stunning insights, specially reformatted for AOL? Are web-users constantly scratching the heads wondering where they can find that 800 number to order those interesting Time-Life videos? Well, 58 percent of those recently polled by Newsweek say they're not interested in more opportunities to buy or view more Time Warner content. So the short answer(s): No. Along with mediocre content – outside the movies and music none of it much more daring, but all of it longer-winded than anything AOL now offers – Time Warner also brings AOL its massive, slow moving, and not always well-oiled corporate structure. AOL, which at least worked on some variable of Internet time, will upon merger become something more like a lumbering behemoth. With such baggage don't count on AOL to react or grow anything like its Internet brethren. Whatever else AOLTW might become, it won't be a beacon of innovation. As far as profits are concerned, that could spell trouble. Fortune estimates that for AOLTW to deliver anything worthwhile to shareholders, it will need to achieve a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion by 2015. Gambling folk might be willing to take a chance on that, but the typical investor doesn't much like the odds of Case and Co. overseeing such growth. Put together, these problems raise the question: Can a huge, soon to be slower, company filled to the gills with well-made, but mundane content survive—much less succeed—in the Internet century? Maybe. But the very fact that the question can be asked should be enough to dispel the fears the public (not necessarily the shareholders) has voiced over the merger. According to Newsweek's poll, only 25 percent of adults say the merger is good for the country, and just as many say it's bad for the country. Only 18 percent of the people think the merger is good for them personally. The reason for all this anxiety is of course the fear that AOLTW will create some sort of media monopoly. The fears are justified, as control of the larger news providers is already being placed in the hands of fewer companies. Time-CNN is one large player in an Internet news field that has shrunk to a few partnerships, including ABC-Ne w York Times, NBC-MSNBC-Washington Post, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media army. But as AOLTW's problems illustrate, size, especially when it comes to content on the Internet, is not necessarily an asset. The Internet fights boredom with innovation and variety – built-in assets that rarely, if ever, come from the top down. All the news sites on the Internet that offer something different, with flare and creativity, offer alternatives to traditional media sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post. It is ironic that in the drive to find ever-elusive Internet profits, media companies are gaining bulky partnerships that in my view will seriously hinder their ability to offer anything exciting or attractive. Does the thought of receiving your info from ABC and the New York Times get your heartbeat going, or does it rather strike you as soliciting redundancy? So should anyone care about the "power" of the growing media slugs? Just a little. But keep in mind they're already biased, and kidding no one but themselves when they say otherwise. And while the mergers and partnerships open new possibilities for conflicts of interest, those conflicts exist today, as the Los Angeles Times recently evidenced when it sold its soul to Staples in coverage of Los Angeles's new Staples Center arena. More importantly, independent Internet news sources, once condemned as childish rumormongers by conventional players like the New York Times, will continue to expose these media shenanigans and pick up the slack. Many an Internet company could benefit from the simplicity AOL has built into their service. But as long as boredom rules the big company sites – when was the last time you visited msn.com? – the longer they'll limp along unprofitably, and the more quickly any "ownership" of the Internet will revert (if ever it was lost) to the millions of users posting and seeking independent thoughts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter Topolewski was born in Canada in 1972. Against the odds that seem stacked against everyone at birth, he is just now beginning to learn that the society and system of authority one is born into is not the society and system of authority one must accept. He lives and works in Vancouver, where his corporate communications company is based. His email address is PTopo@aol. com. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 4, No 5, January 31, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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