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Ringmaster Richard Parsons Tames Time WarnerCrowd
May 22, 2007
On May 17 I attended the Time Warner annual meeting in Burbank. CEO Richard Parsons gave a presentation, told us &;we toil on your behalf&; and said after years of “going sideways, we finally got some movement in the stock.” He pointed to the board of directors, &;I work for them, they work for you.&;
He went over numbers and showed graphics like InStyle with Haile Berry, Bugs Bunny and CNN with Anderson Cooper, adding &;I&;d like to salute publicly our journalists who put themselves in harm&;s way.&;
Befitting the Warner Brothers location, he showed a pair of film clips. The latest Harry Potter looked vivid and great, while the new Hairspray left me wondering if John Travolta (in drag as the mom) has a speech impediment. Parsons noted the studio won 10 Oscars in 2007, but I don&;t see Travolta finally getting his for this. Nonetheless, Parsons urged the audience to see the films “early and often.&;
“Can old media exist in a digital world?&; is the challenge for content creators, according to Parsons, and is something a writer like myself struggles with every day. &;We&;re in the content creation business; ink on paper, television, video. Our challenge is to move our company into digital, whether you own it, rent it, watch it on an iPOD.”
Parsons is unflappable, as befits a man who says he’s a big fan of Happy Feet. He also has a good sense of humor, staying calm while noted corporate gadfly John Chevvedden talked about Parson&;s high ($22 million) compensation. When another stockholder admonished Parsons for selling Google years ago, he said, &;We could have done better, but no one has ever gone broke taking a profit.&;
What&;s Time Warner all about? Parsons put it this way:
1. Make money for our shareholders.
2. Do some good in the world.
3. Have some fun doing it.
From a media training point of view, couldn’t have said it better myself.
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