The book rightfully focuses on Time Warner's role in this and does a fair job of covering the other giants. Keep in mind too, this is not a book about the "dot com bust". It is about the media giant's inability to find a viable online role.

Is it maybe jumping the gun in some of it's conclusions? Particularly in regards to AOLTW? You'll have to read it and decide.

I think the book is a little unfair in one respect. While it accurately chronicals the media giants shortsightedness and sometimes incompetence in dealing with the online world. To me the one glaring omission from the book is the fact that it wasn't just big media who's lost billions in the battle for the internet, and in fact...the war may not be won. That's never really acknowledged and in fact with some of the final summations on AOLTW...the author may be jumping the gun.

Still, if you are at all interested in the "Big Media" the book does an excellent job of covering ALL the big media. Cable, broadcast, news/wire services, publishing (magazine and newspaper), recording industry. Nothing is left out. That's for sure.

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Looking back 4 years to look forward....the media wars....old/new  Jun 24, 2006 By Joyce Schwarz "Joyce Schwarz"
Written in 2002 -- this book will give you some insight into what's happening in the emerging entertainment space of streaming media, community, broadband and VOD (video on demand) and more....the author says in his preface that this book is about the ultimately quixotic effort by Time Warner and other big media companies to build Internet companies....he explains that the whole thing was like a Volkswagen assembly line suddenly being asked to start building Cadillacs. In the first chapter he mentions Neil Braun, head of Vast Video and I just had to look up to see what Neil is doing today -- he's head of a company called IDT Entertainment and Vanguard Video-- their next film is called SPACE CHIMPS, they also produced Seven Days in Tibet and The Tuxedo for Dreamworks...so he's not doing that badly...the amazing part of this is that many of the guys and gals who went off to work on the new media divisions of the major corporations -- are still around-- and making deals today-- so this is a good book to prep you for what the future may hold and who you may meet! Nice chapter on Time Warner's Full Service Network trials and challenges. Lots of stuff about how Time Warner tried to find media partners in the new economy...of course this was written before AOL BOUGHT TIME WARNER...fascinating huh? Of course one company you won't find listed is GOOGLE or no iTunes here...amazing how 4 years makes a difference in this new economy...Maybe some of the newspapers should have tried harder to understand the web....because it seems that many of the web companies really understood media and the user generated media revolution much better than the old economy stalwarts thought they did. Now they're lucky to sell their companies for the value of their mailing lists....fascinating...but remember you're only reading up until 2002...Too bad these books don't have a website that updates them online...hmm maybe that's what I should do with my books --check my profile and you'll see info about those and why I really do know this side of the business -- not only was I there -- I was fighting to get some of the big media companies to really understand how to best be involved!

0 of 2 found the following review helpful:


wonderful, well written book  Sep 26, 2002
charming book, Motavalli can turn a phrase