Film Friday: An Old Movie Giant continues to "slim down"

One of the most amazing symbols of the enormous growth of the internet was the merger between America Online and Time Warner, which was really a case (Steve Case?) of AOL buying out Time Warner, though key Warner executives would remain in positions of authority.   That an internet company had become so powerful that it could buy out one of the largest media conglomerates in the world was impressive enough.  It was the first indicator of the ways that traditional and new media were being combined to create a new kind of mass media content. 

But this wild diversification of Time Warner has created an unwieldy monster.  Before the decade was over, AOL had been spun off From Time Warner, and after a deal with another publisher fell through, Time Inc, the magazine end of the media conglomerate, will be spun off into a new, publicly traded company. (Note that this also comes after Time Warner got rid of its interests in record labels.) 

Let's face it: magazines are in deep trouble, even as Warner honchos insists that Time Inc will greatly benefit from the spinoff.  (I'll talk about how the death of print may be a bit premature in some other post.)   So by slimming down its peripheral assets, Time Warner is returning to a fundamental approach to entertainment provision; they are going to be a company that produces film and tv shows and also provides cable television service.   Their primary purpose will remain as a distributor of audiovisual content, which is what they've been since almost the beginning.

The Warner Brothers -- Jack, Sam, Harry, and Albert -- opened their first movie theater in 1903, and a year late began distributing films and opening more theaters.  Eventually they became involved in production, ultimately buying out First National pictures and releasing some of the earliest sound films in Hollywood, most famously The Jazz Singer.   This move vaulted them into being one of the five major studios in the old Studio System: they had facilities to produce films, they could distribute them and show them in theaters that they owned. 

Eventually, the Supreme Court decided that this vertically integrated practice violated Constitutional law, forcing the major studios to sell their theater chains.  (Think of movie screens the same way you'd look at all the other screens in your life: they're all part of the package.)  But since deregulation, Time Warner is able to devour other media sources and get involved in cable tv.  That era has already become part of the history, alongside the original names.   One veteran executive, speaking in the 1970s of the difference between the "new Hollywood" and the classical Hollywood era, said, in those days we made pictures; today we make deals.   With the spinoff, Time Warner is going to be back to what it knows what to do: make and sell movies.