Armstrong, the former Google advertising chief (pictured), jettisoned some top lieutenants from AOL, the internet conglomerate, last month. Beyond that, he's believed to be planning major job cuts as part of a sweeping reorganization of the company. "AOL is not going to change itself by incremental movements," Armstrong recently told PaidContent. Asked if this meant "large cuts," he talked about going "deep into the employee organization... to come up with ways to structure the company... I would expect announcements about that by early next year."

Early next year would mean just after the spinoff from Time Warner, assuming it goes forward as expected late this year. An AOLer who attended a recent internal "Town Hall" meeting on the restructuring, dubbed Project Everest, confirmed the layoffs are planned for post-spinoff.

One explanation we've heard for that timing is that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes didn't want layoffs taking place while AOL was part of his company. That makes some sense — layoffs typically carry a price tag, and Time Warner presumably doesn't want to take the hit for a move that will benefit another company over the long term. Time Warner isn't taking on debt as part of the transaction, our AOL tipster said, which jibes with the media conglomerate's statements that it is AOL that might load up on debt as part of the spinoff.

But a delayed deep restructuring means uncertainty for investors considering what to do with AOL shares in the earliest days of tradubg, which in turn means a potentially depressed price. A weak re-debut for AOL shares would not bode well for a company that has already had more than its share of struggles. Then again, if anyone can sell uncertainty, it's a consummate salesman like Armstrong.

UPDATE: 3:38 pm ET: Post updated with comments from an AOLer.

You know, like with different retellings of the same event from different perspectives. Not like Courage Under Fire level Rashomon homage. Like Vantage Point level Rashomon homage. But still, you get our point, right? That it'll be kind of interesting to get the "behind the seams" (ugh) look at how the pretty tall people think (or don't) about things and all that. But watching it directly after PR? Maybe not.

We'll give you an episode, Models. But just one!

• Hair Dye—In 2002, Maxim decided to sell its own line of hair dye. It had ads on TV and everything. To this day, when you see an overtanned 40-something with a shirt unbuttoned to his navel, lounging by a mid-rent Cancun pool with a striking head of black hair—that man is a Maxim hair dye legacy.
• Casino—In 2006, Maxim's publisher signed a deal to build a $1.2 billion Maxim Casino on the Vegas strip, with 60,000 square feet of gambling and 2,300 rooms. How'd that go? Today, the #2 Google result for "Maxim Casino" is a post on this blog.
• TV Specials—Just announced today! "E! has partnered with Maxim magazine in a two-year deal to produce a series of hourlong specials," including "Maxim's Celebrity Beach Watch" and "Maxim's Hottest Moments 2009." We have a feeling this will be the big one.

In retrospect, AOL's deal to acquire — and then be run by — Time Warner marked the end of a century when old media conglomerates were at their peak. The merger, valued at $182 billion when it was announced, was the largest in U.S. history. It is also arguably the most disastrous in history. The combined value of the two companies — both inflated by the dot-com bubble — was $350 billion. Today, before the spin-off goes through, the whole shebang sports a market cap of just under $28 billion.

Now that the struggling old media company is parting ways with its fast-shrinking internet toy, the media's hand-wringing over the deal nine years ago looks absurdly hubristic in retrospect.

Here are some quotes from early 2000, after the deal was announced (and about a year before it was consummated):

• New York Times: A "merger of tree-snapping behemoths... the Godzilla of the Internet... wed the King Kong of content. It is a natural time for the other denizens of the jungle to wonder what the future will hold for the colossal couple and the world they inhabit."
  
• USA Today: "It's one of those rare events that seems to change the world overnight... We're shocked... "
  
• Newsweek: "AOL Time Warner will be unchallenged in its online customer base and hold vast cable-television assets."
• Regional telco SBC Communications, as quoted in CBS Marketwatch: "The merger will establish, through a web of equity and contractual interests, one interlocking conglomerate with control over both the high-speed pipes consumers use to connect to the Internet and the content they access once they're online."
• Salon, April Fool's Day: "AOL Time Warner announced Friday that it had acquired France."

There were some pessimists; a columnist named Paul Krugman wrote that only time would tell about the wisdom of the deal, and that it's possible " some big businessmen have just made a very big mistake."

Instead of fearsome tentacles everywhere, Time Warner is now left with the old-line business it was in before the 2000 deal. Except those assets — cable networks, a movie studio, magazines — now face more obstacles to growth than they did eight years ago.

AOL chief Tim Armstrong, the former Google sales chief, finally has his own company to run; it remains to be seen whether he can reverse AOL's steadily declining advertising revenues. But it's Time Warner that's left with the tougher job: Proving media conglomerates can still post impressive growth amid the rise of online media consumption.

Yes, we missed this little (read: HUGE) bit of news last week because I was busy weeping from joy/beauty/soaring heartbreak in the Place des Vosges and nobody else here watches this unfortunate pile of misery and pearls of a TV show, but it does, late or not, bear mentioning.

Nikkie Finke reported last week that the intended 80's-set spinoff of the high society kidz show has been axed by The CW. So Gossip Girl is left with a bizarro stand-alone episode about Lily's youthful rebellion in the whiskey-soaked days of rock 'n' roll Venice Beach. Which creates something of a sad curiosity—an Olympic stadium half built, only to have the bid go to another city, a birthday cake sitting in the refrigerator even though little Jimmy died in the grain thresher just this morning, a party dress laid out softly on a bed, curtains billowing in the window, while outside zombies devour everyone. Poor Andrew McCarthy just can't get a break. But Brittany Snow? Consider yourself rescued.

Now, of course, Finke is not the last word on this. People are still acting like the prom queen isn't dead, and she may not be. But with the CW in triage like every other network, it may be time to face the tough turkey: Gossip Girl isn't a hit, it's just a cultural foofaraw. It's no Top Model, it's no One Tree Hill, it's not even Supernatural. So in this day and age, what with the economy and all, a glitzy new wing added to the already empty and echoing Versailles that Cecily von Ziegesar built might not be the best thing toward keeping the monarchy in place. (France!)

So, watch tonight, it could be your first and only time to observe this curious artifact—that lovely new necklace you just bought for charming Miss Marie-Antoinette.

Says THR:

After months of gossip and speculation, "Gossip" creators/exec producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are proceeding with a spinoff that will serve as a prequel to the hot sophomore drama and chronicle the wild teen years of Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford) in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

The network has ordered a backdoor pilot for the project, which will air as a "Gossip" episode May 11.

Written by Schwartz and Savage, the spinoff will center on young Lily Rhodes (her maiden name) who, after a falling-out with her parents, is forced to move in with her sister, the black sheep of the Rhodes family. Overnight, Lily has to transition from a life of luxury and schooling at a wealthy Montecito boarding school to living deep in the Valley she once made fun of and going to public school. Caught between two worlds, Lily dives into the fast-paced Sunset Strip and the Hollywood lifestyle of the '80s, journeying over the hill to a world of wealth and excess that used to be her own.

Thank goodness Schwartz and Savage have finally found a time period and setting where they can chronicle spoiled teens snorting cocaine and living lives full of excess! We eagerly look forward to Lily's run-ins with scene rival Angelyne, with whom she tussles for the affection of strangely distant KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.

• 'Gossip Girl' spinoff moving forward [THR]

Boomp3.com

A reunion of TV teen icons took place at the conclusion of the star-filled Nautica Malibu Triathlon when Saved by The Bell stars Tiffani Thiessen (AKA Kelly Kapowski) ran into Mark-Paul Gosselaar (AKA Zack Morris). As the two caught up on all of each other's exploits, it quickly became apparent that the two looked as if they were transported right back to those magical days at The Max. That is, until Thiessen turned the conversation towards the potential of a Saved By The Bell spin-off. Gosselaar seemed unsure about the idea of a spin off, considering the misfires that were Saved By The Bell: The College Years and Saved By The Bell: The New Class. Thiessen was unrelenting, though, going as far as to use the recent 90210 spin-off as an example of an old show that got a big boost by incorporating some of today's cooler and edgier positions on teen life. Thiessen said, “It would be so much fun. Just imagine the theoretical child of Zack and Kelly raising heck all over Bayside. Meanwhile, Zack would be raising heck in the corporate world or maybe real estate and Kelly is running for vice president or something.”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

The swift executive rotation was a deliberate strategy of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a management consultant by training. She called it "repotting" — moving executives around through different parts of the business. While it may have helped her charges' careers, it did nothing for PayPal. The latest potted plant to occupy PayPal's C-suite, Scott Thompson, is bragging to investors that PayPal will soon derive more than half its revenues from websites other than eBay. A good thing, considering how growth in eBay's core auction business is grinding to a halt.

Thiel saw this as a problem back in 2002. eBay was growing fast at the time, but PayPal's investors — the company was briefly publicly traded before eBay bought it — were worried about its dependence on another company. After eBay bought PayPal, executives spent years grinding away at "integration" — even though PayPal, as an independent concern, had managed to neatly fit its payment service with eBay's auctions, without much help from eBay — in fact, with eBay actively trying to replace it with its own BillPoint payment service.

In the years since, what has eBay done with PayPal? It's recycled ideas from the Thiel era, and tried to tout them as "innovatons." It has swollen the size of the PayPal unit to some 7,000 employees. ("What do they do?" a former PayPal executive asked me.) And it has leaned on PayPal to mask slow growth in its core business.

How much would PayPal be worth now on its own, without eBay's bloated management? Would Amazon.com and Google even be trying to challenge it in the payments business? Perhaps it's a question that shouldn't remain abstract.

eBay tried to buy PayPal several times; every time eBay returned to the bargaining table, PayPal's price went up. It finally took the workings of a liquid market to determine PayPal's worth; after PayPal's IPO, eBay had to pay a fair price for the payments company.

Yes, it's time for another PayPal IPO. Too bad Peter Thiel isn't available to run the company — he's making far more money on his hedge fund than he ever did from PayPal.

(Photo by David Orban)