Gerald M. Levin, Time Warner Chief in a Merger Debacle, Dies at 84

Gerald M. Levin, a “visionary” media government, as he was usually described, who ran the world’s largest media firm, Time Warner, and have become an architect of its merger with America On-line, extensively thought-about the worst company marriage in American historical past, died on Wednesday. He was 84.

Jake Maia Arlow, a grandchild of Mr. Levin’s, confirmed the loss of life, in a hospital, and mentioned he lived in Lengthy Seashore, Calif. No different particulars have been supplied. Mr. Levin had been recognized with Parkinson’s illness.

Mr. Levin was Time Warner’s chief government when he and his counterpart at AOL on the time, Steve Case, devised what was then the largest business merger in U.S. historical past. When the deal was introduced on Jan. 10, 2000, Time Warner was the world’s largest media firm, and America On-line was the biggest web firm, with a mixed market worth of roughly $342 billion (the equivalent of about $625 billion today).

The merger, which created AOL Time Warner, was heralded as a watershed second — the union of outdated and new media, a storied Twentieth-century American firm whose origins may very well be traced to the publishing baron Henry Luce and the Hollywood boss Jack Warner, hitching up with a Virginia tech firm for a experience into the World Large Internet. As a substitute, it turned shorthand for the excesses of the turn-of-the-century dot-com bubble and the period of so-called synergy.

Richard Parsons, who succeeded Mr. Levin as chief government of AOL Time Warner in 2002, mentioned in a telephone interview for this obituary in 2022 that Mr. Levin was “one of the smartest guys in the media and entertainment space,” a “visionary” who noticed the digital wave coming and understood how the web would rework Time Warner’s enterprise.

“He saw the merger with AOL as making Time Warner digital by injection,” Mr. Parsons mentioned. “What AOL brought to the party was instant access and competence in terms of how to access the internet world.”

The merger’s failure was swift and unmerciful. AOL’s inventory value slid greater than 30 % between the deal’s announcement in January and its approval that December by the Federal Commerce Fee, pushing AOL’s proposed $165 billion purchase of Time Warner — in inventory and assumed debt — down to $112 billion.

By the beginning of 2002, AOL Time Warner’s market worth was hovering around $127 billion. That 12 months, the corporate posted a net loss of $98.7 billion, a file for a U.S. firm. Ted Turner, the corporate’s largest particular person shareholder on the time of the merger, later told The New York Times that the deal had value him 80 % of his price, about $8 billion. Mr. Levin resigned in 2002.

The corporate dropped “AOL” from its identify in 2003, and in 2009 Time Warner spun off the AOL unit to shareholders with a market capitalization of $3.5 billion.

Blame for the failure was positioned on a wide range of elements, together with the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the cultural variations between Time Warner and AOL and, embodied by Mr. Levin and Mr. Case, a conflict of egos. There have been additionally allegations that AOL wasn’t the corporate that Time Warner thought it was linking with. Earlier than the deal closed, AOL paid a $3.5 million fine in Could 2000 after the Securities and Alternate Fee accused it of improperly inflating income by a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} — a preview of what would develop into a yearslong accounting scandal that embroiled the brand new firm.

Fay Vincent, the previous commissioner of Main League Baseball, who sat on the boards of each Time Warner and AOL Time Warner, mentioned in an interview: “While I think it’s fair to criticize Jerry, it wasn’t a total case of Jerry being wrong so much on the merits, as some of the facts about the appeal of AOL were — and let me say it very carefully — grossly overstated. It turns out we got on the wrong horse.”

1 / 4 century earlier than the AOL Time Warner catastrophe, in 1975, Mr. Levin helped change the tv panorama when, as chief government of a regional pay-TV channel known as Residence Field Workplace, he persuaded its guardian firm, Time Inc., to transmit the community’s sign by way of satellite tv for pc. The gambit, an trade first, made HBO accessible nationwide, simply in time for the “Thrilla in Manila” prizefight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

“Advocating for HBO to be on the satellite was one of the most important decisions of my entire career,” Mr. Levin was quoted as saying in James Andrew Miller’s guide “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers” (2021). “The only way you get ahead is if you see something that no one else sees and it’s a little crazy. Satellite at that time was kind of a dreamy thing, but the idea of making HBO into a national network rather than relying on a lot of little cable networks was a pretty big idea.”

The thought’s success earned Mr. Levin the unofficial title of “resident genius” inside Time Inc. and paved the way in which for nationwide cable channels.

“It was Jerry Levin who revolutionized television when he was the first to utilize satellite transmission for programming,” Barry Diller, the media mogul who’s now chairman of each IAC and Expedia Group, mentioned in an announcement for this obituary, “and he had great resistance inside Time Inc., but he persevered and ‘cable television’ was born.”

Later, as Mr. Levin climbed the ranks at Time, he was instrumental within the firm’s merger with Warner Communications. As chief government of Time Warner, he orchestrated the corporate’s buy of Turner Broadcasting System, bringing into the corporate cable property like CNN, TBS and Cartoon Community.

Mr. Miller, the creator of “Tinderbox,” mentioned in an interview that Mr. Levin was “the last person that central casting would’ve sent over” to run the world’s largest media firm.” Mr. Levin, he mentioned, didn’t slot in with the “golf-centric, very WASPy establishment” that was Time. He was an mental who preferred to cite the Bible and the French thinker Albert Camus, and who lacked the congeniality of company bosses like Robert Iger at Disney or Jeff Bewkes, the previous Time Warner chief. However, Mr. Miller mentioned, Mr. Levin may very well be “as tough as any of them.”

Mr. Levin wasn’t a “manager of people,” Mr. Parsons mentioned, however an insular thinker who would prepare dinner up concepts at house, then come into the workplace and say: “This is what I think we should do. Now, go and do it.”

“Most managers recognize that the real difficult part of the job is managing the people,” Mr. Parsons added. “That wasn’t his bag.”

That administration fashion didn’t ingratiate himself with workers at Time Warner’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters.

“There are plenty of C.E.O.s who, despite being awful human beings, engender intense loyalty in their employees,” Nina Munk, the creator of “Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner” (2004), mentioned in an interview. “But nobody at Time Warner was willing to take a knife for Jerry Levin.”

Gerald Manuel Levin was born on Could 6, 1939, in Philadelphia to David and Pauline (Shantzer) Levin. His father ran A. Levin Butter & Eggs, a enterprise he took over from his father; his mom managed the house.

Although raised in a Jewish family, Mr. Levin additionally developed an curiosity in different religions from an early age. He studied biblical literature and Christian philosophy at Haverford Faculty in Pennsylvania, the place he obtained a bachelor’s diploma in 1960. He obtained a legislation diploma from the College of Pennsylvania in 1963. After commencement, he went to work in New York for the worldwide legislation agency Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett (now Simpson Thacher).

In 1967, he took a job on the Development and Resources Corporation, a nongovernmental worldwide funding and administration concern, that took him to Iran to work on a dam mission for greater than a 12 months. In 1972, he moved to Sterling Communications in New York, an early cable-TV firm, engaged on what was as soon as generally known as “the Green Channel.” That job modified the course of his life and profession.

“I had a life before HBO,” he informed Mr. Miller for “Tinderbox.” “It was fascinating, but my real life began with HBO. It was my first kiss. It was my first and greatest love.”

Mr. Levin was married thrice: to Carol Needleman, Barbara Riley and, most not too long ago, Laurie Perlman. All three marriages led to divorce.

Along with his grandchild Jake, he’s survived by 4 of his 5 kids, Anna Nicholson and Laura, Leon and Michael Levin, in addition to six different grandchildren. His son Jonathan, a well-liked 31-year-old public highschool instructor within the Bronx, was murdered and robbed in his Higher West Facet house in 1997 by a troubled former scholar.

After Jonathan’s loss of life — an incident that drew large news coverage — Mr. Levin stayed house from the workplace for months. He would later say that the one purpose he returned to Time Warner was as a result of he felt a way of mission to do massive issues with the place that he had. That massive factor, he mentioned in an interview for this obituary in 2022, turned AOL Time Warner, a deal that he had felt would make his son proud as a result of it was “living to the next era.”

“He was a symbol of the modern era in terms of all the things we did — music, sports, philosophy,” he mentioned, “and he implemented it to his students every morning.”