Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Got you. Okay. So let’s do do the reverse. So you guys go first then I’ll go last. So what is Time Warner thinking it's doing? So in my head, I’m wondering if they’re buying technology or they think they’re buying technology or it’s really buying distribution that like, say, they’ve somehow missed out on the internet and they need this way to distribute their content and it's much better to actually own it than to partner. And by buying AOL or by getting bought by AOL, then suddenly AOL has all these dialup customers, they’re in all these homes and they have a brand-new channel to get their content to them. I think if I was going to try and rationalize it from Time Warner’s side, that’s what I would go with. I think there’s just some amazing quotes, doing the research here from all the principles involved and from media and observers at the time. But I think it’s kind of like Kara Swisher, you know, as you quoted, Brian, from her book, she’s the one who’s honest about this like, “Yeah, at the time people were riding high on something,” and they thought that this made sense. Jerry Levin, the CEO of Time Warner and then CEO of the combined company, he has this quote from when the deal gets announced. I think he said this to maybe there’s a big Washington Post article. I think it was in this. It might have been written by Kara.…

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