AOL, Time cite social goals

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The blockbuster merger pact of America Online and Time Warner aims to make the world a better place by fighting social ills, the heads of both companies said Tuesday.

"This is not just about big business. This is not just about money," said Gerald Levin, the Time Warner chairman who will be chief executive of the new linkup.

"This is about making a better world for people because we now have the technology and the instruments to do that," he said in a round of early-morning television appearances with Steve Case, the on-line company's chairman.

AOL, the world's biggest online company, said Monday it would buy Time Warner, the biggest media company, in a $160 billion stock deal that would be the largest merger ever.

One of the goals, Levin said, is to plug the so-called digital divide, "to try and make sure that ultimately those who can't afford it can get it."

Neither Levin nor Case gave any other specifics of plans "to change the world."

"So we're going to have to change our rhetoric," he said on the ABC program "Good Morning America." "We're going to have to change the way we think -- because the Internet is that profound." He called the Internet "wildly democratic," partly because it can make anyone a publisher.

Case, 41, who is to be chairman of the merged companies, said both outfits were run by entrepreneurs "who want to run a business and want to change the world."

"Together we have an unbelievable opportunity to really make a difference, not just in terms of the services people use but also in terms of the kind of impact we can have on society," he said on the NBC "Today" program.

Case said he expected the proposed merger, which is subject to regulatory and shareholder approval, to have a quick impact by making richer content more readily available among other things.

"We're not talking about 10 or 15 years," he said. "We work on Internet time. This is a company that's going to move fast. We want to see things every six months."

AOL and Time Warner vowed to open what would be their vast cable system to online rivals. In so doing, they moved to take a debate over access to high-speed Internet pipelines out of regulators' hands and into the marketplace.

Levin, 61, said "new age" companies had a genuine commitment to social progress.

"There are companies with people inside who really care" about using the Internet for social progress, he said on NBC. "And that's what we're going to try to do."

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Yes indeed, Turner and Levin leading the CHARGE for social progress on the internet!!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 11, 2000

Answers

Anybody ever read "Walden II", B.F.Skinner's opus on a wonderful society run by technocrats......

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 11, 2000.

Those who can...DO. Those who can't...Post articles about those who can.

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 11, 2000.

Turner and Levin are gonna help me? Great! They'll both be here Saturday morning to help unload a cord of wood. Gee, that's nice of them.

Now that that's settled, I have the sale of this bridge I own in San Francisco I would like to discuss....anyone?

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), January 11, 2000.

-- I'm@pol.ly,

Must have hit a NERVE with this posting. Just trying to keep up with what your PALS are up to!!

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), January 11, 2000.

Great...a bunch of Lefties with a HUGE bankroll on a mission to cram their vision of Utopia down our throats!

-- ~~~~ (Losing it @ Lost it .com), January 11, 2000.

One of the goals, Levin said, is to plug the so-called digital divide, "to try and make sure that ultimately those who can't afford it can get it."

This means that AOL will now be FREE?>???? LOL

-- HAHAHAH (haha@hha.cpm), January 11, 2000.

DOES THIS DESIRE FOR SOCIAL ADVANCEMENT MEAN WE CAN EXPECT REAL EFFORT PUT INTO WHAT THE CHILDREN OF THIS NATION AND THE WORLD ARE FED VIA THE TUBE AND THE NET.THIS MUST MEAN MORAL VALUES WILL BE INSTILLED IN THE PROGRAMING,WITH THOUGHT GIVEN TO THE AFFECT OF WHAT IS CURRENTLY BEING INSTILLED IN THE YOUTH OF AMERICA AND THE ADULTS,WE ARE ALL INFLUENCED BY IT?????OR IS THIS JUST RHETORIC?IF IT IS NOT RHETORIC (BULL),THEN WE CAN EXPECT AN IMMEDIATE CHANGE!!!!!

-- J (jax@borg.com), January 11, 2000.

---buncha nwo elitist power hungry snobs. "They" know what's good for you! don't bother to think for yourself, it's all automatic! Hey! You got pictures! Hey! You got mail! Hey! You got spam! Hey! You got mindless violence in movies! Hey! You got news slanted to fit your affluent lifestyle! Hey! Keep giving them your cash, buy their stock, make em rich! Your kids will thanky ou and send you the appropriate electronic implant message on your birthday at the euthanasia home in the future! Only 10 to 15 years!

-- sixofsixofsix (youwillbeassimilated@resistance.is.futile), January 11, 2000.

geee, does this mean we'll now be treated to an internet with the same socialist communist government slantyed spin as presented on CNN? I can hardly wait.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), January 11, 2000.

"God" save us from the do-gooders. (And I'm an atheist.)

"Brother's keeper" means brother's ruler.

-- A (A@AisA.com), January 11, 2000.

I wuz considerin' cancelling my AOL acount. Now I am fer sher!

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 11, 2000.

Brothers and Sisters, Thank you very much....the above responses mean there is still hope for America. Thank you

-- JB (noway@jose.com), January 11, 2000.

Thay had to come up with something for the press conference, because this mega-deal is risky at best:

From TheStreet.com:

Reflections of a Time Warner Shareholder, By Jeff Bronchick (Special to TheStreet.com)

1/11/00 3:34 PM ET

(Jeffrey Bronchick is chief investment officer at Reed Conner & Birdwell, a Los Angeles-based money management firm with $1.2 billion of assets under management for institutions and taxable individuals.)

[snip]

...But please, please someone explain to me this: If there is now going to be real competition in the "pipe to the home" with satellite, cable, wireless something, IP/TV etc., why is there a need to tie content and distribution? Why wouldn't Warner Brothers want to distribute content everywhere and therefore not care whether AOL is wholly owned or not? Why would AOL want to limit its appeal as a mass medium by favoring Warner content? Are there any facts to support this hypothesis?

We bought Time Warner years ago at 20 when Gerry Levin was considered the world's dumbest man for trying to tie cable distribution to content. We trimmed our position in the mid-70s-a-share area when the price got a bit silly and bought a little more when it got hammered below 60. But how willing are we to adopt the son of the new economy and its valuation? I'd bet a lot of the Time Warner shareholder base is giddy with the price, but uneasy with the prospect of the future.

And what about AOL shareholders? Can they accept the idea that 85% of their company is growing at a mere 12%? Can they accept the idea that AOL management seems to be doing the economically intelligent thing -- that is, taking grossly overvalued stock and swapping it for one of the best collections of assets in the media world, albeit at the cost of subjecting AOL to real-world metrics like price-to-cash flow rather than press release-to-sales?

This is the wave of the future. It is almost criminally stupid for the management of a dot-com company not to try to buy real-world assets with the ridiculous paper it holds. It is the current-day equivalent of going to Tiffany's (TIF:NYSE - news) with a pocket full of Monopoly money and having them accept it. Barry Diller was so right in trying to take down Lycos (LCOS:Nasdaq - news), but he was early and on the wrong side of the currency.

But when you step across the dot-com line, the game changes. Execution with real assets, as opposed to cute dealmaking and assiduous courting of Wall Street, becomes the metric by which you are judged. Daytrading gets a little tougher if you have to factor in fundamentals, which means multiples still come down big for winners and disappear entirely for losers.

And that is why AOL has changed the game for anyone involved in the Internet, whether it's B2C, B2B, infrastructure, etc. The blurring of the dot-com and the real world at best will move multiples -- and there is a lot more room on the way down for the dot-coms than there is upside for real assets.

So we've sold half our Time Warner and have a quick trigger on the other.

We continue to have a persistent caution on the price we are willing to pay for an exceedingly rosy outlook on the future. When you get media types like Time Warner on the same stage as the most successful new-economy management team, it is easy to get swept away in the euphoria: These guys are good! Not to mention the unholy specter of media writing about media writing about media -- all of which creates a dismal spasm of self-congratulation. But good guys laboring under excessive valuations start to look very ordinary after a while...

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 11, 2000.