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28 Apr 2010 10:23

tags

Biz: AOL’s profit picture looks a lot worse than it did a year ago

  • $48
    million
    decrease in AOL’s profit
    between this quarter and the
    same quarter a year ago
  • 4.6
    million
    number of people who STILL subscribe to AOL’s legacy service after all these years source
  • » Why the cruddy profits? It’s worth keeping in mind that AOL is a different company than it was a year ago. The company, fresh after leaving the disastrous merger with Time Warner which hurt both companies, is in the midst of making a big push into content, away from its core subscription business. (Disclosure: We freelance for AOL News occasionally.) Even considering that, their profit picture is significantly lower than expected – instead of the analyst-expected 70 cents per share, they could only muster 39 cents per share. Part of this is due to the quickly-falling legacy subscriber base and part of it is due to continuing advertising declines.

03 Feb 2010 10:31

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Biz: AOL’s first post-Time Warner quarter shows a (tiny) profit

  • $1.4
    million
    the amount AOL made in profits this quarter, their first since being spun out of Time Warner’s lair
  • $1.96
    billion
    the amount AOL lost in the same quarter a year ago; their subscriber rates are still dropping source

02 Jan 2010 15:38

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Biz: Time Warner and News Corp. come to a deal, freaking finally

  • We’re happy to have reached
    a reasonable deal with no disruption in programming for our customers.
  • Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt • Regarding the deal made between his company and News Corp. over content. News Corp. wanted a dollar per subscriber for its content each month; Time Warner wanted to pay them closer to twenty cents. They found a happy medium or something. Customers still lose because it means higher cable prices either way. source

04 Nov 2009 10:51

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Biz: Time Warner’s third-quarter profits look scary and anemic

  • -38% decline in profits at Time Warner; the company’s been most hurt by publishing and online ad declines
  • -18% decline in advertising revenue at AOL, which is in the midst of rebranding itself as a news resource source

20 Oct 2009 22:22

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Tech: With net neutrality, could tiered internet make a comeback?

  • ISPs who can’t cap bandwidth may charge for traffic. With net neutrality looking more and more likely by the day, we may find ourselves returning to the days of paying for traffic based on usage. Consumers don’t want it, but companies like Time Warner and Comcast say that the cost of bandwidth, mixed with heavy usage of BitTorrent or popular video sites, may force it. We think that it’s probably going to happen, simply because they can’t fight the tide of Hulu forever. source

28 May 2009 10:15

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Biz, Tech: Time Warner’s ready to drop AOL like a bad habit

  • one AOL was a haven for newbies that was fairly popular, distributed too many free CDs and ran Netscape into the ground.
  • two AOL was big enough in 2000 to buy out Time Warner for $106 billion. Then Time Warner became bigger than AOL again.
  • three A decade later, AOL has completely lost relevance and Time Warner’s planning to spin them back off. Good riddance. source