AOL Time Warner in Move to Drop AOL Name

AOL Time Warner is considering dropping the AOL name from its corporate masthead…The proposal–made by senior management of the AOL division–will be considered at a group board meeting next month.

Jonathan Miller, head of the AOL division, appointed last year to reinvigorate the AOL division, ordered an internal study to review the impact of the brand name on the parent company and the operating subsidiary. In a detailed memo to AOL TW CEO Dick Parsons he is said to have urged the group chief executive “to give me back my brand“.

If the company decides to drop the AOL name it may return to its old Time Warner symbol, TWX.

WSJ.com story (subscription required): It’s not clear where the board stands, but it’s unlikely that the board would oppose a name change if the AOL management was in favor, according to the Journal, citing a person familiar with the situation.

– Miller’s e-mail to Parsons, in News.com: “Since the merger in early 2001, the three letters AOL have ceased to stand for the Internet and the promise it entails and instead have become the shorthand for the world’s largest media company,” Miller wrote. “As AOL Time Warner became known as, for all intents and purposes, ‘AOL,’ any controversy or criticism involving the corporate entity has actually hit our consumer brand.”

On spinning off AOL, on Reuters.com: One source familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity, said the company was not likely to consider any spinoff while under federal investigation, or before management gets a chance to reverse losses at the unit.

NY Times: “The biggest potential obstacle to the change may be Steve Case…Case devised the merger, and two senior executives who worked closely with him said that he might view the deletion as a repudiation of its rationale or an erasure of his accomplishment.”

WaPo, on execs. in favor of keeping the name: “The guy in Cleveland, if he’s considering buying either Yahoo or AOL [broadband], he might think if AOL Time Warner thought it wasn’t worth keeping AOL in the name of the company, why should he spend and extra $39 a month on it?“.

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