The New Yorker's James Suroweicki says that the failure of the AOL/TW merger has more to do with TW's failure to utilize AOL's distribution network than the culture clashes between the two companies. Time Warner never had a homogeneous culture in the first place. He doesn't, however, deny that such conflicts existed. AOL's astronomical valuation left newly merged AOL execs much wealthier that their TW counterparts and one TW employee recalls an AOLer ending a meeting by saying "Well, I'm worth $100 million, so the truth is, I just don't really care."
The culture excuse