2000

AOL buys Time Warner

On January 10th American Online, or just AOL as it was now commonly known as, announced it was buying Time Warner Communications. What an uproar in the news, some ten-year-old hotshot internet company buying one of the oldest and best-known media companies in the world. AOL stock was valued twice that of Time Warner which was a larger company in both sales and assets. Time Warner had Time Magazine, Time Inc, Warner Brothers Studios, CNN, HBO, Warner Music Group, Warner Cable, Turner Cable, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the list went on and on. What did AOL have? Thirty million users that were mostly a captive audience by using the AOL client to access the Internet, well that and a lot of cash from those users paying $19.99 a month. Steve case, the CEO of AOL talked how great the merger would be, AOL would bring all the Time Warner content to users in one place with the AOL client, it would be a wonderful world.  

AOL Interview