overview
ABC, SBS, BBC
Advance
Annenberg
AOL
APN
Astors
Aust Networks
Beaverbrook
Bertelsmann
Black
Cox
Disney
DMG
Elsevier
Fairfax
Financial Press
Fleet Street
Hearst
Liberty
Maxwell
News & Murdoch
New Yorker
NY Times
Packer
Sony
Thomson
Time Warner
Tribune
US Networks
Viacom
Vivendi
W Post
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Time Warner
The current merger
between America Online and Time-Warner (itself the product
of the merger between the Time-Life publishing empire and
the Warner music, film, publishing and theme parks
conglomerate) has been praised by some analysts as an
ideal marriage of content with carriage.
The new group,
based of course in the US, will operate in all continents
except Antarctica and have sales of around US$40 billion.
Time-Life
The best
biography of the curiously neglected Henry Luce, whose
media offspring are now part of the AOL-Time-Warner
behemoth, is probably Robert Herzstein's Henry R Luce:
A Political Portrait of the Man who created the American
Century (New York, Scribners 94). Wilfred Sheed's Clare
Boothe Luce (New York, Dutton 82) is a confection
guaranteed to rot your teeth or turn your stomach; Henry's
wife is better served by other biographers. David
Halberstam's exemplary The Powers That Be (New
York, Knopf 79) is essential reading.
Outsider, Insider (Darien, Marian-Darien 98) is
a memoir by Luce's successor Andrew Heiskell, depicting
the supposedly warmer, gentler Time-Life before the Warner
boys moved in.
We've noted Richard Clurman's To The End of Time
(New York, Simon & Schuster 92) for its an
insider's-eye view of the Warner takeover of the Time-Life
empire in a previous bout of industry consolidation.
Unsurprisingly, more accountants, nicer offices, more
ulcers but none of the forecast massive profit increases.
Loudon Wainwright's Life: The Great American Magazine
(New York, Ballantine 86) is another view from inside the
beast of the decline and fall of Life - Wainwright
unfortunately confuses Life and life - the magazine
since resurrected by the suits at Time-Warner.
Turner
Frenetic selfpublicist Ted Turner - the Richard
Branson of the 1980's - was captured in the superficial It
Ain't As Easy As It Looks: Ted Turner's Amazing Story
(London, Virgin 94) by Porter Bibb. Among studies of CNN
and the news industry we recommend Carla Johnson's Winning
The Global TV News Game (Boston, Focal 95)
Warner
Connie Bruck, author of The Predator's Ball,
provided the best study of Steve Ross and Warner in Master
of the Game: Steve Ross & the Creation of Time Warner
(New York, Simon & Schuster 94)
Fredric Dannen's Hit Men: Power Brokers & Fast
Money Inside The Music Business (New York, Vintage 91)
is an acerbic expose of fine times among the contemporary
music business. Norman Lebrecht's When The Music Stops
(New York, Simon & Schuster 96) provides a similar
account of classical music recording.
Tom King's David Geffen: A Biography Of New Hollywood
(London, Hutchinson 00) suggests that while industry
structures have changed - more independent production for
example - the personalities haven't. Stephen Singular's The
Rise & Rise of David Geffen (New York, Birch Lane
97) is less substantial. There's a gentler portrait of
Geffen in John Seabrook's Nowbrow: The Culture of
Marketing, the Marketing of Culture (Knopf, New York
00), much hyped but largely devoted to angst about whether
the author should wear a t-shirt with his tailored suit
and whether Tina Brown really is the Wicked Witch of the
West.
Christopher Byron's The
Fanciest Dive: What Happened When The Media Empire of
Time/Life Leaped Without Looking Into The Age of High Tech
(New York, Norton 86) is overly anecdotal but suggests
that the suits at AOLTW are going to rediscover - the hard
way - that 'it ain't as easy as it looks'. Digital
Babylon (New York, Arcade 99) by John Geirland &
Eva Sonesh-Kedar is a similar account of Hollywood meets
the intermnet.
For perspectives on the
evolving cable television industry we recommend Stephen
Keating's Cutthroat:
High Stakes and Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier
(Boulder, Johnson 99) and L J Davis' The Billionaire
Shell Game: How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted
Corporate Titans Invented A Future Nobody Wanted (New
York, Doubleday 98).
Holdings
The following page
provides an inventory of Time Warner holdings.
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