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It was one of the most remarkable epochs
in American Business history -- a time when technology and
finance joined forces to create so novel a paradigm, such
phenomenal growth, and so unfettered an enthusiasm for making
money that the scenario couldn't possibly last. Of course,
it didn't, but even the most doomsaying bears couldn't have
predicted that the Age of the Internet would be both so
short-lived and so catastrophic for the dreamers of its
impossible dreams.
Nowhere did the black dotcomedy prove to
have greater repercussions than in the world of big media,
the domain of long-established giants like Time, Disney,
Newscorp, and the TV networks. These venerable companies,
which had been carefully developing their business models
-- and loyal audiences -- for years, suddenly found themselves
facing in the Web a new world for which they were ill-prepared
and underfunded. Baffled by this sudden eruption of URLs
and hits-per-day, but well aware that they could not stand
by on the sidelines while fortunes were being made by know-nothing
novices in the flash of an IPO, Old Media set out to claim
what it believed was its own rightful territory on this
lawless frontier. By the time the dust had settled less
than a decade later, it had lost hundreds of millions of
dollars, laid off thousands of people, and suffered the
infinite scorn of media critics, while the largest and most
revered of the bunch, Time Warner, finally sold out to a
scrappy company almost no one had heard of at the dawn of
the '90s called AOL.
The tale of Old Media's adventures in cyberspace
is the story of one of the great business follies of the
twentieth century, and one whose repercussions will be felt
for years to come. In Bamboozled at the Revolution,
John Motavalli, a media reporter who was on the front lines
of this disaster from its earliest days, gives an account
of this remarkable period in all its madness, confusion,
desperation, hubris, drama, and sheer absurdity. Central
to this book is his account of Time Warner, blessed with
a huge catalogue of successful magazines, a flourishing
cable business, and powerful movie and music interests.
But its leader, Jerry Levin, was a technophile with a Vision,
and he was determined to lead his company to stand astride
the Internet age just as forcefully as it had dominated
the age of print. Learning little from a cable debacle called
Full Service Network, Levin sped ahead with Pathfinder,
Time Inc.'s ill-conceived web site that promised everything
but delivered practically nothing of value. When, in January
2000, Time announced that it was "merging" with
AOL, most observers recognized that it was a virtual surrender
-- the almost inevitable culmination of years of bad business
decisions.
Bamboozled at the Revolution also
looks at the many other companies that were led astray by
the siren song of the Web and, through interviews with leading
players in the field, reconstructs the heady and often ludicrous
rush online. From Rupert Murdoch's stillborn Delphi to Hollywood
stars eager to be in the digital vanguard to Michael Eisner's
Disney making one of its rare expensive misjudgements, the
book is a terrifically entertaining and frequently shocking
look at irrational exuberance at its most colourful.
John Motavalli is a media consultant
and was the first Computer/Internet columnist for the New
York Post. In addition, he has worked at Inside Media,
Ad Week, and MCI Communications and has appeared
on MSNBC, CNN, and other cable networks. This is his first
book. He lives in Connecticut.
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