Former AOL, Fox execs to work with General Atlantic
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General Atlantic said on Friday that  two former high-flying Internet executives would advise the  private equity firm&#39;s media and consumer unit on investments in  the online sector.
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Three senior executives are leaving AOL following a recent shake-up that brought in a veteran NBC executive as the online company's new chief executive, two people familiar with the matter said Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - Reactions to Time Warner Inc.'s decision to sack AOL LLC's chief executive officer (CEO) range from lukewarm endorsement to strident disapproval, as the industry tries to make sense of a move many observers find perplexing. Jonathan Miller, who guided AOL through a complicated transformation from an Internet has-been to a credible player, got his walking papers last Wednesday. Randy Falco, a TV industry veteran who was president and chief operating officer of the NBC Universal Television Group, will take over as AOL's chairman and CEO. "It's a strange move, because AOL is on the way up. Miller was responsible for turning around the ship successfully, so it's not clear to me why they're replacing him," says industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. Miller, named chairman and CEO in August 2002, had the difficult task of changing AOL's business model from one focused on dial-up Internet access subscriptions to one centered on online advertising. This involved tearing down AOL's "walled garden" and making freely available on the Web the content and services it previously reserved for paying members via its proprietary software. This leap of faith assumes AOL will make up and surpass with online advertising the revenue it will give up by abandoning its Internet access business. Early indications suggest the plan is working. Although in Time Warner's third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, AOL's revenue declined 3 percent, due to the shrinking access business, online advertising revenue increased 46 percent, faster than the industry average, which hovers between 33 percent and 37 percent. This prompted Time Warner officials and financial analysts to shower Miller and other AOL top leaders with praise. Privately, however, the recovery signs may have come too late and been underwhelming for Time Warner. At a time when an Internet startup like YouTube Inc. gets bought for $1.65 billion, Time Warner may have astronomical expectations for AOL that it didn't see Miller meeting. "Miller's accomplishment is that he transitioned AOL from a fee model to a free model, which gives AOL a future. The problem is that AOL remains a property in trouble, one that isn't performing particularly well, certainly behind Google and Yahoo. That has been the big disappointment. Today, if you have a [company with a] Web model, you're looking for a very rich return on investment," says industry analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group. But as it searches for bigger online ad growth with an Internet industry outsider as CEO, Time Warner risks turning AOL's recovery into a relapse. "Falco doesn't really know the business. That's going to be the problem: he's going to be learning on the job. It may not be a huge problem if he's packaging the company up for sale, but if he's going to try to run it, it's probably going to be a [long] learning experience," Enderle says. As learning goes, Miller is also credited with synchronizing AOL to varying degrees with key trends driving the rebirth of the Web economy, such as blogging, Internet search, digital music, online video and open-development platforms. Lately, he had been spurring AOL product teams to shift their philosophy from making simple yet integrated products and services to developing outstanding ones. "The emphasis today is to make stuff great," Miller said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco a week before he was dismissed. He added then that this focus is key if AOL wants to increase traffic to its Web sites, which in turn fuels its online ad business. Unlike his successor, Miller was no stranger to the Internet business when he joined AOL. He had been president and CEO of USA Interactive's USA Information and Services (USAIS), which included at the time businesses like Ticketmaster.com, Citysearch, Match.com, USA Electronic Commerce Solutions and Expedia.com. A Time Warner spokesman disputed claims that Falco is an Internet newbie, saying that at NBC he oversaw the launch of several Web sites, including one tied to the network's Olympic Games coverage , and of online initiatives, such as the joint portal for U.S. Hispanics that Yahoo and NBC's Telemundo network announced in May. Ultimately, however, Falco comes on board because of his ad sales and traditional media background. "His TV experience and advertising connections really dovetail perfectly with AOL's focus on video and advertising going forward," the spokesman said. "Randy Falco is the right person to take AOL to the next level." Falco will provide more details about what that "next level" goal is when he takes over at a yet undetermined date, according to the spokesman. Miller remains at AOL for now but will leave Time Warner at a date that also has yet to be determined, the spokesman said. At least one high-profile AOL official has decided to jump ship rather than work under Falco. Jason Calacanis, who sold his very successful Weblogs Inc. company to AOL last October and continued to run it as a stand-alone subsidiary, resigned on Friday, after writing on his blog about his disappointment over Miller's removal. Of course, there are precedents among Internet companies appointing chief executives from traditional media companies, like Terry Semel, who became Yahoo's CEO in 2001 after 24 years with Warner Bros., says James C. Goss, a media and entertainment financial analyst at Barrington Research. Whatever Falco does, it's clear his key mandate will be to leverage his experience in the TV industry to accelerate AOL's ad sales business. If he fails at that, his appointment will be seen as a major mistake. "Obviously, AOL has changed its stripes and this just seems like a reaction to the shift in its business, to have somebody as CEO who has a lot of experience in the media side and, from an organizational standpoint, with a large operation of that nature," Goss says. "This is reflective of the dramatic business model change and of the aspirations" that come with it. Be that as it may, some Internet industry observers remain befuddled. "From the outside, it doesn't seem to make any sense," Sterling says. Â ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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InfoWorld - Time Warner plans to split up the Internet access and audience businesses of its AOL segment to run them each independently, Time Warner CEO and President Jeff Bewkes revealed Wednesday.
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By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post Staff Writer  AOL said yesterday that its chief financial officer, Stephen Swad, plans to leave the firm for a position at a private-equity firm.
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After 22 years in the Dulles/Reston area of Virginia, AOL will move the majority of its operations to New York City to be closer to the hub of worldwide advertising, which makes up a good deal of its new business model.
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MUMBAI: The DirecTV Group and Rupert Murdoch&#39;s News Corporation announced yesterday that they are consolidating their pay platforms in Latin America through a series of deals with Grupo Televisa, Globopar and Liberty Media.
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Clear Channel Communications Inc. on Tuesday said it hired the head of AOL's music and radio division to run its online division, a move aimed at bolstering the Web presence of the leading U.S. owner of radio stations.
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The hard-charging broadcasting executive, formerly of Viacom Inc., is taking the command post at Sirius and reuniting with longtime ally Howard Stern. -The Washington Post
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Jeff Bewkes, the new chief of Time Warner, said he planned to separate AOLâs online access and advertising businesses and possibly spin off the rest of the companyâs cable division.
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For the most part, AOL's future plans are the same old story.
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AOL, the Dulles-based Internet pioneer, yesterday said it was moving its headquarters to New York, transferring the leadership of a company that fueled the growth of the Washington area's technology industry over the past decade.
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AOL will move its headquarters from Dulles, Va., next spring as tries to retool itself as an advertising company that competes with the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
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(InfoWorld) - AOL has named Ron Grant president and chief operating officer (COO). Grant was most recently the senior vice president for operations at AOL's parent company, Time Warner, where he worked closely with President and COO Jeff Bewkes on strategy, digital initiatives and operations. As part of his duties, he was key to developing AOL's new strategy focused on advertising. His appointment was announced on Tuesday by AOL'sÂ newly installed chairman and chief executive officerÂ (CEO), Randy Falco, who had been president and COO of NBC Universal Television Group before being tapped to replace Jonathan Miller in the top job. Miller was ousted earlier this month after leading Time Warner's Internet division since 2002. AOL was already in decline when Miller became chairman and CEO and he was unable to arrest its slide, with cable and broadband Internet companies continuing to steal subscribers from AOL and its model based heavily on dial-up service. The company announced in August that it was restructuring that business model, turning the AOL site into a free portal with the aim of bringing in revenue from online advertising. AOL also said it would lay off up to 5,000 employees. Grant obviously is well aware of what he's getting into as he moves from the parent company to the subsidiary, where he previously was senior vice president of business affairs and development, managing a team in charge of business development. Grant's "deep knowledge" of AOL and the Internet market, plus his relationships with others at Time Warner are "critical" factors in AOL's change in strategy, Falco said in a written statement.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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By Richard Lee, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.  Mar. 8--General Atlantic, a Greenwich-based private equity firm, has added a Virginia online services company to its stable of businesses.
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America Online (website - news - quote) reportedly is preparing to fire more than 700 employees in early December - mostly at the company&#39;s Northern Virginia headquarters.
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Randy Falco, AOL's chief executive for the past few weeks, yesterday announced a new team of executives charged with running a "tighter, clearer and better focused" Internet firm.