The Sands of TIME
Posted on 12/24/2007 4:10:29 AM PST by abb
For someone with a reputation for being unsentimental about his company, it was perhaps surprising that Jeffrey L. Bewkes looked to the past when he spoke at a Time Warner management retreat in Miami in late November — his first since being tapped as the company’s next chief executive.
Before the top 200 executives at a ballroom in Miami’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, Mr. Bewkes invoked the legacies of Henry R. Luce and Ted Turner in ticking off the accomplishments of the assembly’s predecessors: inventing the newsmagazine (Time), and spearheading cable news (CNN) and pay television (HBO), according to three executives in attendance who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a private meeting.
But Mr. Bewkes’s task is very different. Those pioneers built the modern Time Warner. Mr. Bewkes, who will take over from Richard D. Parsons on Jan. 2, may be the person who tears it apart.
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If cable were spun off, the speculation — which is not dismissed by insiders — is that Time Warner would seek to either acquire or enter a joint venture with NBC Universal. General Electric has publicly said it has no plans to sell NBC Universal, but speculation in media circles is that the company would consider it following the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which NBC will broadcast. One investment banker who recently discussed the issue with G.E. said he was told, “come speak to us after Beijing” (this banker declined to be identified because of the confidentiality of the message). When Robert Wright stepped down as chief executive of NBC Universal earlier this year, he predicted in Fortune magazine that a Time Warner spin-off of cable in 2008 would spur talks to merge Time Warner and NBC Universal.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Sands of TIME
ping
The Future of TIME
Absolutely, positively, NO need to read any more...
BTW.Merry Christmas!!!!
It’s had to have been a drag on GE for years.
Everyone should go to their local bookstore, shake out all the Slime magazine subscription litter cards and drop in the mail for processing.
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