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Old-line media to online world© St. Petersburg Times published January 20, 2003 Nothing completes the picture of the Internet age's uber-hubris better than the downfall of AOL's Steve Case. Case made America Online an institution, and his takeover of Time Warner seemed to mark the final transfer from old-line media to the online world. But like much of the Internet's over-hyped promise, Case's AOL Time Warner failed to deliver because the vision got ahead of business realities. Case was resented by Time Warner's old guard for the merger, and now that AOL itself is seen as burdensome and soft, his critics relish seeing Case get his comeuppance. But there is more to this failure than the dot-com bust and the shotgun merger of two opposite corporate cultures. Case's vision of a world where information, entertainment and media are fused is still a solid reading of this developing industry. Convenience sells; sales drive the market. Where the company went wrong was in the old-world department -- not taking its competitors seriously enough, failing to foster internal morale and taking customer loyalty for granted. The company's plunging stock prices were a reflection of the New Economy that Case both pioneered and deplored. Now it falls to the old boys at Time Warner to pick up the pieces. They'll look for ways to boost subscriber growth, mine a variety of new online ventures and lure ex-customers back. This won't be easy. Most Americans are more comfortable with computers than when Case made AOL easy to use. It's a buyer's market, not a seller's. This was forgotten, for a time, in the 1990s, when money seemed to measure everything but worth. Now we see, with this departure, that the old principle of success still works. What a radical thought.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times Opinion page |
