A look back: The cover story that set in motion events leading to the near death of Time Warner

-SHOMARI HINES From time to time we like to go back, waaay back, to revisit some of the biggest Businessweek cover stories. We've went back to revisit the Businessweek cover story with then Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin who was on top of the world at the time. We also went back to revisit the cover story on how Comcast wanted to buy Disney, a deal that would’ve probably gone sour after the ink dried. Today we continue this practice. This time we look back at that Businessweek cover story that featured one of the main architects of the AOL Time Warner merger, Robert Pittman who was criticized for hawking all the attention after the merger announcement as if he was the man in charge. The cover set off a slew of rumors of infighting due to the fact that Then AOL Time Warner CEO Geri Levin felt that he should have been on the cover but was being overstepped by Pittman. It was also said that the Pittman cover was orchestrated by the AOL side to remind the Time Warner side, who was buying who. We can understand why Levin felt that way because the cover headline which read "Show Time for AOL Time Warner. Bob Pittman's job is to implement the biggest merger in U.S. history. That's a tall order" gave the impression that Pittman was the man running the show, when in fact, Pittman shared the Chief Operating Officer title with Dick Parsons and was part of a bigger team working to get the merger running smoothly, which we all know never happened. Was Pittman directing Businessweek on the tone of the article, or was Businessweek overzealous? Who knows? But in the end, Pittman was canned, and what followed will go down in history. Show Time for AOL Time Warner [Businessweek]