From Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in today's WSJ[link requires paid subscription]:
A) Walk away from the merger restrictions and dare the Federal Trade Commission to sue (while whispering in every Bush administration ear that AOL will buck up the telecom sector by speeding the rollout of consumer broadband). Also, get the Baby Bells on board by offering to back them on DSL deregulation.
B) Put AOL and Roadrunner together to make AOL Roadrunner. Mr. Case's title as chairman and role as AOL Time Warner's second-biggest shareholder would come in handy here -- to knock the necessary heads.
C) Market the new service by offering unlimited downloads from the Warner Music library. Throw in content from all Time Inc. publications and make it available online as soon as it's edited. And how about free downloads of last season's episodes of "Sex and the City," "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under"? To quell fears of Napsterization, remind colleagues that the music industry was singularly vulnerable because the CD is such a crummy, costly way to deliver popular music.
Glad to know someone reads my blog and bugs our house for their ideas.
Yeah, I'm kidding, but those are all terrific ideas that have been discussed in our home. Unfortunately, I can't see Case actually stepping up to the plate. It seems like he just doesn't give a shit anymore, frankly. And why on *earth* was someone (Don Logan) with no tech experience put in charge of AOL anyway?
A view from the dark side. (telco/baby Bell) Before we do the AOL/DSL two step, OABTW a good idea, we have to resolve the WCOME/MCI thing. My hope is that the BB's will just scoop up the customers without having to buy the debt and, and, WCOME owes us a lot of money. So some resolution here is requires. Powell (FCC) has signaled that the Feds would squint if one of the BB's did buy WCOME. Hmmmmmmmm.....
Posted by Bryon at August 19, 2002 07:58 AM"...B) Put AOL and Roadrunner together to make AOL Roadrunner. Mr. Case's title as chairman and role as AOL Time Warner's second-biggest shareholder would come in handy here -- to knock the necessary heads...."
That is NOT what the world needs now.
What the world needs now is another folk singer...
Posted by Nicole at November 13, 2002 06:18 PM