Ringmaster Richard Parsons Tames Time Warner Crowd
May 22, 2007On 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.