FILE - Gerald Levin, head of Home Box Office, a cable TV service, is pictured in his New York office in the Time-Life building, Dec. 19, 1977. Levin, who led Time Warner Media into a disastrous $112 billion merger with the internet provider America Online, died Wednesday, March 13, 2024. He was 84. Gerald Levin, who led Time Warner Media into a disastrous $182 billion merger with the internet provider America Online, died Wednesday at the age of 84, according to media reports.
Levin once even drew an equivalence between his newfound passion and his former development work, according to the book, saying “there's very little difference between water, electricity and television.” That perspective led him in 1972 to a position as vice president of programming at Time's fledgling cable network, Home Box Office, later to be known simply as HBO.
It took Levin another two years to claim the CEO title at Time Warner and another four years of warding off additional offers and managing internal squabbles to hit upon his next big idea. This was the so-called “information superhighway,” which Levin called the Full Service Network. It was an early conception of an always-on, interactive entertainment and communications network that the company promoted but never came close to actually building. Meanwhile, Time Warner shares languished.
Levin wasn't interested. On paper, AOL was worth roughly twice as much as Time Warner, but to Levin it seemed overvalued thanks to internet-related hysteria. But he agreed to meet Case for dinner, just to talk. The two hit it off, and that evening, Nov. 1, 1999, the men essentially agreed to a “merger of equals.”
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