153. The AOL/Time Warner Merger - Crossover with the Acquired Podcast

**Brian McCullough** (0:35)
Welcome to the Internet History Podcast. I'm your host, Brian McCullough. Quick bit of show business before we get started here, guys. As of today, I'm hereby officially moving the show to an every other week schedule, instead of aiming for once a week, like I've done for the last three or so years. So the next show after this one will drop on or around October 2nd, depending where you are in the world when you download it. I'm making this change official now, since as you've seen over the summer, I've been missing a lot of weeks and it always drives me crazy. And I was inspired by one of my favorite podcasts, The Flophouse, which switched to every two weeks in order not to burn themselves out. And subsequently, they are celebrating their 10th anniversary this month. And as I would like this podcast to last a decade, at least, I'm basically just going to gear down to a pace that will allow me to keep this going for a decade, make it easier for me to sustain. That doesn't mean I won't drop a surprise episode here and there when one falls in my lap or if enough episodes pile up.
I'll think of it this way. Let's think of it this way. I'd rather surprise you on the upside than always be worried that I'm disappointing you on the downside. I'd rather you say, Wow, I wasn't expecting a new episode this week, but here it is, rather than another Monday rolling around with an empty queue. So that is what we're going to do now.
Anyway, on to today's episode. On today's episode, Ben and David, the guys from the podcast Acquired, are back.
And today we're going to talk about a topic that very much lends itself to the unique format of our two podcasts crossing over. We're going to be talking about the AOL Time Warner merger in the early 2000s, which is generally considered to be certainly one of the worst mergers of all time and possibly one of the greatest business disasters generally. I thought rather than just doing the history of the thing by myself, getting Ben and David back on the show would allow me to do the history and then blend it with their unique analysis format, thereby letting us go deeper into this story than maybe I normally would. So today, like a Harvard Business School case study of a 70 car pile up on the interstate, here is the story of the AOL Time Warner merger.
So like $1,000 put in dominoes at its nadir has a better return than Apple.

**David Rosenthal** (3:31)
We're in the wrong business.

**Brian McCullough** (3:33)
I know. Bottom fishing is a dangerous game though.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:49)
Welcome back to episode 44 of Acquired, the podcast about technology, acquisitions and IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (3:57)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:59)
And we are your hosts.
So today, back by Popular Demand, we've got Brian McCullough of the Internet History Podcast on the show for a crossover episode. So thank you for joining us, and hello, Brian.

**Brian McCullough** (4:11)
Hi, guys. Popular Demand, are you sure?

**David Rosenthal** (4:17)
Yes.

**Brian McCullough** (4:17)
This episode was one of the more popular ones of this year. Did we do the other one this year?
Trust me, it's in my top 20 for sure, and I'm over 150 episodes at this point.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:29)
Wow, sweet.

**David Rosenthal** (4:30)
Well, you are in our top five.

**Brian McCullough** (4:33)
I think the melding of the format makes all three of us up our games a little bit.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:41)
It does, I think, because it forced a little change for us. We were just talking about this before the show, but listeners, Dave and I were talking about how we do our research for these episodes with Brian, but knowing that he's got such a clear narrative around it, we just have this spew of facts, and we can play the role of, hey, wait a minute, what about, instead of actually structuring the narrative ourselves. Continuing a little bit here about, you guys probably want to know what the episode is about. So listeners may remember the last time we did this, in episode 33, with Overture's acquisition by Yahoo. And today we're going back to kind of a similar time, in a little bit before, in 2000
And we're going to be talking about the sort of legendary, potentially the biggest flop of all time, a legend in the world of M&A, the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000

**David Rosenthal** (5:34)
I don't know that legend is the word I would use.