December 14, 2001
Boomtown Readers Ponder Life at AOL After Levin
Kara Swisher

Readers respond to columnist Kara Swisher's recent column concerning Gerald Levin's departure from AOL Time Warner and the company's future.

Andrew Susman, chief executive officer, Studio One Networks: I was a fly on the wall (Director, Business Development, New Media) at Time Warner for about 2 1/2 years, when Levin wore ties.

Time Warner, at the time of the merger, brought a dowry of the largest repository of information and entertainment outlets in the world. And it was proven that people were willing to pay for, or advertise in, its myriad elements. No one could even put a value on its archival materials or photo files. Mr. Levin didn't need a company to help him create or sell, but he did realize that Time Warner wasn't able to distribute its products for maximum growth and profits in the emerging high-tech world, and, please believe me, he picked AOL.

What it will take to make this merger work is a management that will prevent a ruinous culture clash between the aggressive techies and the old-shoe Timeys. Don't worry about their end of the ship, but AOL is going to have to stay far ahead of the curve on the interactive side. AOL Time Warner may not "dominate" modern communications, but it will certainly have a leadership position.

Kara responds: While it is very easy to imagine that consumers are going to buy music or movies or whatever digitally in the future, it is quite another thing to get them to change current behavior so they will actually do it and, more importantly, pay for it. I do think this is a question of when rather than if. But those who own the content, for a variety of both idiotic and intelligent reasons have hindered a lot of this development. The wrangling over Napster, for example, was a real black eye for media companies, who needed to be visionary enough to look beyond the immediate issues of free media and think about what the phenomena said about consumers. And, of course, also critical is how the two sides of this marriage get along. They surely can wreck the whole thing if they stupidly focus on the differences in the cultures rather than the things they have in common.