Deal Drags On
wsj: December 7, 2000
As the pending merger between America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. enters its 11th month of regulatory review, some investors are apparently getting restless.
At a media conference in New York this week, AOL Chairman Steve Case was stepping out of the bathroom, when a conference attendee demanded: "Could you just get that merger done, already?"
Indeed, Mr. Case said many AOL employees are more anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Federal Trade Commission's vote next week than the end result of the presidential contest. However, he pointed to one benefit of the companies' long courtship: Compared with the presidential candidates, the companies have had a long time to prepare for taking office. "We have had a lot of transition time," he quips.
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December 7, 2000
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After 50 Years of Effort,
Interactive TV Arrives
By JARED SANDBERG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
interactive.wsj.com
Excerpts:
Interactive TV is supposed to be technology's next big thing. There's TiVo, Replay TV, AOLTV -- and the pending merger of America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. offers a host of new possibilities for combining AOL's interactive expertise with Time Warner's vast media properties and cable-TV networks.
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For the past quarter century, cable-TV companies, telephone companies and media companies have racked up billions of dollars in losses, trying in vain to give couch potatoes a reason to engage with the tube and control programming in ways never before possible. Perhaps no other technology has been so relentlessly pursued. Why not just stick to improving the Internet experience on a computer? Because consumers spend 3.5 billion hours per week in front of the TV, compared to 1.2 billion hours in front of the PC.
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. In fact, Microsoft and AOL executives admit that people don't particularly like to surf the Net with their TVs, despite spending millions of dollars to develop such services. But as the Web hosts more entertainment programming, many feel it could be better suited to a TV set than a computer screen. Says analyst Gary Arlen of Arlen Communications Inc., who has been watching the industry for two decades, "The land keeps changing."
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Now, interactive TV seems to have arrived -- again. Features such as interactive games and e-mail on the tube already are available to more than seven million Europeans. Start-ups TiVo Inc. and Replay TV Inc. allow consumers in this country to pause live TV and record shows onto low-cost hard drives with the click of a button. Microsoft's WebTV and AOLTV allow users to pull up detailed information such as the county-by-county vote in Florida while they're watching the news. General Motors Corp.'s DirecTV satellite service provides simple text-based news reports with the click of the remote.
Even more ambitious ideas are on the drawing boards. AOL Chairman Steve Case said this week that reinventing TV is one of the top goals of AOL Time Warner. "Television hasn't changed that much in 30 years except that there's more channels and it's harder to find stuff," Mr. Case said at an industry conference. "There are ways to make TV more engaging."
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