Generic Headline for Bland Business Item
Hey, remember back when people thought they could practically print money on the Internet? Yeah, the good old days when AOL had the stones (and the market capitalization) to buy Time Warner.
What a difference 8 years makes. In a year that saw Warner Bros. roll out mega-hit The Dark Knight, net income for the parent conglomerate is down 26% from last year. Why? AOL. The dinosaur’s “ongoing shift from a subscription model to an ad-supported model” has chopped into profits.
The most amusing bit in the Variety item by Dade Hayes is this line: “Surprisingly, there are still 6.1 million access subscribers to AOL.” I didn’t even know AOL still had subscribers.
This isn’t a strictly movie related post, but LiC is resolutely anti-conglomerate when it comes to media and the arts and it warms our hearts when it backfires. Of course if anyone was to pin the shrinkage on our beloved Speed Racer, we might have a fight on our hands…
Filed under: Business, News
Tags: AOL, The Dark Knight, Time Warner
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AOL has always had problems, for many reasons. I temped at a marketing company in the mid-90’s that had them as a client.
Yes, it does warm our hearts when the conglomeration of media and arts backfires. :-)
Before the web took off, I actually had AOL. This was back in the days when they charged by the minute.
Gotta love the AOL business model. Hey, how about you let us put up a wall between you and the internet, so you can pay us every month to come through the cluttered doorway we’ll put in that wall for you.
And here, please accept these 40 CD-ROMs per year as our little ecologically-friendly bonus gift. (Though those metal tins were sure handy for extracting seeds from shake.)
It’s a wonder AOL lasted this long. You’d think those remaining 6.1 million subscribers would have realized by now that their modem can get to the series of tubes via a truck other AOHell.
“Though those metal tins were sure handy for extracting seeds from shake” hahah.
I think some folk are still a’sceered of the Internets…you know, they see them predators on the Dateline program with that nice white fella every week and people having their whole identity stolen and whatnot, why you just don’t know what could be happening on the other end of that big electronic abacus. Luckily, AOL is here to protect us from ourselves.