When fantasies border on stupidity

By SDH We’ve heard crazy ideas/fantasies before like when it was suggested that Time Warner buy Starbucks, that one, though clearly just someone talking out of their rear was just extreme and made absolutely no sense no matter how anyone wants to look at it. Now comes another crazy idea/fantasy though not as extreme as the Time Warner Starbucks suggestion, this one is also someone talking out of their rear. After browsing over at “All Things Digital” we came across a post from Kara Swisher who begs that we indulge her, in her no sense fantasy/idea that instead of Microsoft buying Yahoo! They should buy AOL and the giant media company attached to it, Time Warner. AOL by the way is attached to Time Warner, and why say Microsoft buying Time Warner would be a bargain compared to Yahoo! While in the same breath mentioning that the current price tag for Time Warner is $51.5 billion but it would balloon to about $87 billion due to debt? Double the price of what Microsoft is offering for Yahoo! We know it’s just a fantasy but we’re talking reality here. If Microsoft were to even mention that they are kicking the tires on the overweight Time Warner, their stock would go into a free fall. Microsoft knows nothing about traditional media which is what makes up the majority of Time Warner. And bottom line, it would be AOL Time Warner 2.0. The only thing that would fit with Microsoft is AOL, so why not just grab AOL if Jeff Bewkes decided to sell. No need to buy a bunch of assets you’re going to have to unload just to gain control of one. There is no value in Harry Potter, HBO or any other Time Warner brands, shows, networks for Microsoft. If Former Time Warner CEO Geri Levine didn’t get caught up in the hype that was AOL, Time Warner would probably be in good shape right now. But it is still suffering from the after effects of that merger. Kara Swisher asks why doesn’t Microsoft buy Time Warner. Well the answer to that is simple. They have no interest in dumping a load of cash on a debt laced company in a business they know nothing about, that is still trying to find their way after being knocked on their ass. Oh yeah and Steve Ballmer kinda likes his job and net worth. We think the same goes for Bill Gates, at least on the net worth part.

Is Rupert Murdoch Wendi Whipped?

By SDH With all his power and billions of dollars, one would think Rupert Murdoch can't be dominated. One would think he would have someone, especially his wife wrapped around his finger. Nope! According to GQ Magazine's "Most Whipped List", Rupert Murdoch is one of the most henpecked husbands on the planet. The list also includes former Time Warner boss Geri Levin. But GQ failed to include other whippees like Les Moonves, Sumner Redstone and Bob Iger. Wendi Deng was just another twentysomething MBA (and thirty-eight years his junior) when she netted the Aussie billionaire master of the universe, whom she seems to enjoy belittling in public. According to New York magazine, she's said to have revealed that he uses Viagra (but doesn't need it) and once asked him in front of colleagues, "Are you going deaf, old man?" In January, Deng got her mighty mogul to play waiter at a women's-empowerment event in Davos, Switzerland, much to the amusement of Murdoch watchers the world over. Then again, waiting on Deng has helped Murdoch gain access to the multibillion-dollar Chinese-media market, so who's using whom? Under the guidance of his new-wife-cum-guru, Laurie Perlman, the former CEO of Time Warner has remade himself into a New Age–spa keeper. He once described a drum circle at the couple’s Moonview Sanctuary as “a ritual, archetypal setting to get at the most fundamental questions of life.… Instead of a male hierarchy, it becomes almost feminine in its openness.” But hey, if you’d orchestrated one of the most disastrous mergers in business history, you’d seek inner peace, too.

Looking back at some of our look backs

We don't like to stir up bad memories...OK who are we kidding? We live for this shit! Anyway, remember this Businessweek cover story featuring one of the main architects of the worst merger in the history of American business? Well many say this was the cover that led to the near death of Time Warner. Ok we said it! We did a look back on the good old times of Jerry Levin when he was on top of the media world as CEO of pre-merger Time Warner. What is now called old media was all the rage back then, cable, print, you name it. Time Warner was king. Until.....well you know! Some of you may not remember but there was a time not too long ago when Comcast CEO Brian Roberts thought he was actually going to buy Disney. He believed so much that he even did a "Bob Pittman" by doing a premature Businessweek cover. People will do anything to sell an idea won't they? Seriously, where would Disney be today if this deal did happen?

Former executives of the AOL-Time Warner disaster seek normalcy in health related businesses

Isn't it ironic that the two men who orchestrated the worst merger in history are both in health related businesses? Former Time Warner CEO Gerald Levine went underground the day he left the TW offices for the last time, only to pop up as a partner in some kind of health spa in California where he settled. Now his former co-pilot Steve Case finally got his health website off the ground. We guess after all the pain their dumb merger caused people they felt obligated to to get into businesses where people in pain, mentally and/or physically can seek help. In the case of Steve Case, his new venture called RevolutionHealth.com is a kinda like a knock off of WebMD but you have to pay more. Anyway In Steve's own words, he tells us why he went the health route. After leaving AOL, I thought long and hard about what I should do next. I felt that health care was in dire need of transformative change, and decided to build another company that could be a change agent, with the goal of shifting power into the hands of people themselves. I see this as a business opportunity, to be sure, and we’re aiming to build Revolution Health into a major company. But I also see this as an opportunity to do some good, by tackling a health care system that is a mess, in the way I know best: by building a company that can change the world. The Doctor's Office Gets Crowded on the Web [WSJ] RevolutionHealth.com