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Gerald M. Levin, a “visionary” media government, as he was usually described, who grew to become C.E.O. of the world’s largest media firm, Time Warner, and an architect of its merger with America On-line, broadly 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 had been offered. 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 $600 billion today).
The merger, creating AOL Time Warner, was heralded as a watershed second — the union of outdated and new media, a storied Twentieth-century American firm whose origins might be traced to the publishing baron Henry Luce and the Hollywood boss Jack Warner, hitching up with a Virginia tech firm for a trip into the World Large Net. As a substitute, it grew to become 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 many smartest guys within the media and leisure house,” a “visionary” who noticed the digital wave coming and understood how the web would remodel Time Warner’s enterprise.
“He noticed the merger with AOL as making Time Warner digital by injection,” Mr. Parsons mentioned. “What AOL delivered to the occasion was instantaneous entry and competence by way of entry the web world.”
The merger’s failure was swift and unmerciful. AOL’s inventory worth slid greater than 30 p.c 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 document 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 p.c of his value, 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 quite a lot 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 up with. Earlier than the deal closed, AOL paid a $3.5 million fine in Might 2000 after the Securities and Change Fee accused it of improperly inflating earnings by a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} — a preview of what would change 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: “Whereas I believe it’s truthful to criticize Jerry, it wasn’t a complete case of Jerry being incorrect a lot on the deserves, as a few of the information concerning the attraction of AOL had been — and let me say it very rigorously — grossly overstated. It seems we received on the incorrect horse.”
1 / 4 century earlier than the AOL Time Warner catastrophe, Mr. Levin helped change the tv panorama when, in 1975, as chief government of a regional pay-TV channel referred to as Dwelling Field Workplace, he persuaded its mother or father firm, Time Inc., to transmit the community’s sign through satellite tv for pc. The gambit, an trade first, made HBO obtainable nationwide, simply in time for the “Thrilla in Manila” combat between the boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
“Advocating for HBO to be on the satellite tv for pc was one of the vital necessary selections of my whole profession,” Mr. Levin mentioned in James Andrew Miller’s e-book “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers” (2021). “The one method you get forward is should you see one thing that nobody else sees and it’s a bit of loopy. Satellite tv for pc at the moment was type of a dreamy factor, however the thought of constructing HBO right into a nationwide community slightly than counting on lots of little cable networks was a fairly large thought.”
The thought’s success earned Mr. Levin the unofficial title of “resident genius” inside Time Inc. and paved the best way for nationwide cable channels.
“It was Jerry Levin who revolutionized tv when he was the primary to make the most of satellite tv for pc transmission for programming,” Barry Diller, the media mogul who’s now chairman of each IAC and Expedia Group, mentioned in a press release for this obituary, “and he had nice resistance inside Time Inc., however he persevered and ‘cable tv’ was born.”
Later, as Mr. Levin climbed the ranks at Time, he was instrumental within the firm’s merger with Warner Communications. As C.E.O. of Time Warner, he orchestrated the corporate’s buy of Turner Broadcasting System, bringing into the corporate cable property like CNN, TBS and the Cartoon Community.
Mr. Miller, the creator of “Tinderbox,” mentioned in an interview that Mr. Levin was “the final person who central casting would’ve despatched over” to run the world’s largest media firm.” Mr. Levin, he mentioned, didn’t slot in with the “golf-centric, very Waspy institution” that was Time. He was an mental who preferred to cite the Bible and the French thinker Albert Camus and lacked the congeniality of C.E.O.s like Robert Iger at Disney or Jeff Bewkes, the previous Time Warner chief. However, Mr. Miller mentioned, Mr. Levin might be “as powerful as any of them.”
Mr. Levin wasn’t a “supervisor of individuals,” Mr. Parsons mentioned, however an insular thinker who would cook dinner up concepts at dwelling, then come into the workplace and say: “That is what I believe we must always do. Now, go and do it.”
“Most managers acknowledge that the actual troublesome a part of the job is managing the folks,” 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 many C.E.O.s who, regardless of being terrible human beings, engender intense loyalty of their workers,” Nina Munk, the creator of “Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner” (2004), mentioned in an interview. “However no one at Time Warner was keen to take a knife for Jerry Levin.”
Gerald Manuel Levin was born on Might 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 was a homemaker.
Although raised in a Jewish family, Mr. Levin developed an curiosity in different religions, too, from an early age. He studied biblical literature and Christian philosophy at Haverford School in Pennsylvania, the place he obtained a bachelor’s diploma in 1960. He obtained a regulation diploma from the College of Pennsylvania in 1963. After commencement, he went to work in New York for the worldwide regulation 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 Inexperienced Channel,” which modified the course of his life and profession.
“I had a life earlier than HBO,” he instructed Mr. Miller for “Tinderbox.” “It was fascinating, however my actual life started with HBO. It was my first kiss. It was my first and biggest love.”
Mr. Levin was married 3 times: to Carol Needleman, Barbara Riley and, most just lately, Laurie Perlman. All three marriages resulted in divorce.
Along with his grandchild Jake Arlow, he’s survived by 4 of his 5 youngsters, Anna Nicholson and Laura, Leon and Michael Levin, in addition to six different grandchildren. His son Jonathan, a preferred 31-year-old public highschool instructor within the Bronx, was murdered and robbed in his Higher West Aspect condominium in 1997 by a troubled former pupil.
After Jonathan’s loss of life — an incident that drew huge news coverage — Mr. Levin stayed dwelling 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 huge issues with the place that he had. That huge factor, he mentioned in an interview for this obituary in 2022, grew to become AOL Time Warner, a deal that he had felt would make his son proud as a result of it was “dwelling to the following period.”
“He was an emblem of the fashionable period by way of all of the issues we did — music, sports activities, philosophy,” he mentioned, “and he carried out it to his college students each morning.”
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