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Case jokes. His.
But Parsons appears shoo-in for the top AOL job
By Jeff Bercovici
What are the chances that Ted Turner will be the next chairman of AOL Time Warner?
Slim to nonexistent, probably, but that hasn't stopped the outspoken CNN founder from being mentioned as a candidate for the job now that Steve Case has promised to resign in May.
Speaking to students at Emory University Law School yesterday, Turner didn't exactly ooze empathy for his erstwhile colleague, quipping, "I guess you could say the case is closed."
Turner, whose influence was instrumental in pressuring Case to step down, has no reason to believe he will be chosen to replace him.
"Nobody has talked to me about it," he said during the question-and-answer session. "I'm not running for anything, unlike Gephardt or Lieberman."
Perhaps not, but according to a report in today's New York Times, Turner is still hoping to be offered the job, even though he would probably say no.
That's unlikely to happen.
Although several of AOL Time Warner's board members are considered outside possibilities, including Fannie Mae CEO Franklin D. Raines and former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, the best bet is that the job will go to CEO Richard Parsons.
Parsons has the singular advantage of being liked by virtually everybody with a part to play at AOL Time Warner -- an amazing achievement for someone who's been at the company as long as he has, considering how much rancor and resentment have poisoned the atmosphere there.
Despite his closeness to his predecessor, Gerald Levin, co-architect, along with Case, of the deal that brought America Online and Time Warner together, Parsons is seen by Time Warner insiders as being relatively untainted by the disastrous merger, in which he played only a minor role.
AOL partisans, meanwhile, like Parsons for his generosity toward Steve Case, whom he probably could have pushed out months ago but instead allowed to exit in his own time and with his dignity largely intact.
The only real criticism Parsons faces is that he is widely seen as more of a corporate politician and mediator than a visionary, but even that doesn't necessarily work against him. People remember all too well that it was the grand visions of Case and Levin that landed AOL Time Warner in its current mess.
Assuming that Parsons ascends to the chairmanship, the question becomes: Who will replace him as CEO?
Don Logan, chairman of AOL Time Warner's media and communications group, and Jeffrey Bewkes, chairman of the entertainment and networks group, both have an inside line of the job, and could conceivably even be appointed co-chief executives.
A more interesting scenario has the company tapping Viacom president Mel Karmazin, a favorite of Wall Street who gets along uneasily with his boss, chairman Sumner Redstone.
January 14, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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