AOL, which has already told investors it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told employees. The company is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of AOL’s payroll.
Little by little, AOL is offering investors more and more details about what the company will look like after it spins off from Time Warner. But the more AOL discloses, the less attractive the company looks. The newest problem: AOL’s steady flow of Google money is going away.
AOL formally acknowledged that it plans on a round of very large cuts: In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Time Warner unit said it plans on taking up to $200 million in restructuring charges through the first half of 2010. Earlier this week, Kara Swisher reported that AOL’s coming spinoff would be followed by layoffs of up to 1,000 employees.
Yesterday, Viacom told Wall Street that its third quarter had been better than most analysts expected. Today Time Warner delivered a similar report: Revenue was on track, but cost savings improved the bottom line. That won’t help hundreds of Time Inc. employees who face job cuts this quarter. Meanwhile, the company can’t ditch AOL soon enough: It has already spent $100 million prepping it for a spinoff this year.
Hearst’s dude-centric UGO site, which has been without a permanent CEO since June, is still looking for a new boss. But in the meantime, it has some new blood: The company has brought in Hearst veteran Christopher Johnson to run programming and product strategy and hired Julie Shumaker to run 1UP, the gaming site it bought earlier this year.
AOL continues to prep for its impending spinoff from Time Warner. Today’s step: Announcing the board of directors for the company-to-be. Boldface names of note include William Hambrecht, former head of tech investment bank Hambrecht & Quist; Michael Powell, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; and Jim Wiatt, former head of William Morris. Notably absent: Anyone from Google, Tim Armstrong’s favorite recruiting ground, and any whippersnappers, unless you count 46-year-old Powell.
Just in case anyone thought Time Warner had any lingering interest in NBC Universal, this ought to put it to rest: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes just compared the proposed Comcast/NBCU deal with the disastrous one his company made with AOL nearly a decade ago.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the opening moments of a New York City press conference to reinforce a message he’s been delivering for several weeks: The worst is over, things are looking up, and Google is spending accordingly.
Steve Ballmer says he doesn’t expect to do much search-related M&A, which makes sense since there’s little left to buy. But he may be willing to pay for search. Ask AOL.
Google marked down AOL’s value from $20 billion to $5.5 billion earlier this year. That’s still too high, argues a JP Morgan analyst.
Of course, Time Warner’s AOL has hired yet another Google veteran. That’s what the company does under the Tim Armstrong regime. Today’s example: Shashi Seth, the one-time “monetization” boss at YouTube, who was most recently running sales at Cooliris. His new job: Senior vice president of global advertising products, reporting to Armstrong’s lieutenant (and Google vet, natch) Jeff Levick.
Here’s your daily dose of goodish news about the Web ad business, courtesy (again) of Mark Mahaney, who says display ads are perking up. Or at least some of them are.
You already know this, but it’s always good to be reminded: In online video, there’s YouTube, and then there’s everybody else. Today’s data point: ComScore’s August video report, which shows Google’s video site generating 10 billion views and owning 39.6 percent of the market. That’s 10 billion views, and that’s just counting Web surfers from the U.S. Factor in international visitors and…it would be a lot bigger.
Heavyweight media investor Gordy Crawford–who happens to own a big chunk of Time Warner–says the conglomerate plans to dump its magazine business. But I get the sense that Jeff Bewkes and company plan on keeping at least some of the unit’s iconic titles.
More from the post-Q&A Q&A: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says major investors like Gordon Crawford support her, and that she’s in the market for medium-sized M&A. Here’s what she had to say.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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