Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet [Hardcover]

John Motavalli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2002

The 1990s was one of the most dynamic eras in American business history. Technology was advancing at such a rapid pace, with such widespread growth, and with such giddy enthusiasm from investors, that it seemed too good to last. It was.

Media insider John Motavalli gives a vivid account from the front lines of the compelling drama that developed in the media industry during this time, as old-world, advertising-driven companies thought they'd found a new world to dominate. But it led to some rather colossal failures. Time Warner's FSN was a multibillion-dollar interactive cable disaster and its sequel, the Web-based Pathfinder, was even more embarrasing. Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and the New York Times Company also stumbled. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg: this struggle is one of the great business follies of our time and continued until January 2000, when AOL swallowed up Time Warner, a first-of-its-kind marriage of new and old.

Fast paced and exciting, Bamboozled at the Revolution reveals a period of wonderful excess and is sure to join Barbarians at the Gate, Burn Rate, and, more recently, The New New Thing as the definitive portraits of unique eras in business.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When the Internet shifted from an isolated network of computer scientists into a genuine mass medium, traditional media companies knew they wanted in on the action. But as Motavalli, who created the New York Post's Internet beat, reveals, they wound up making the same mistakes they'd made when home video and cable TV hit the market, conceding too much early ground to innovators, then scrambling desperately to catch up. The book might more accurately be subtitled "How Time Warner Lost Billions and Its Autonomy in the Battle for the Internet," as more than half the book depicts the conglomerate's bungled attempts to launch an online presence and the missteps in its business relationships with AOL that set up the Internet company's dominant position in their 2000 "merger." This material would make a solid book on its own, perfectly illustrating the era's dysfunctional business model: "Workers on the Web side of a media outlet would work in what became splendid isolation, basically autonomous, as those picked to oversee them slowly began to realize that they never would figure out exactly what the Internet guys were doing in their cubicles." But Motavalli pads the account with stories from other media companies, big and small, including several where he once served as a consultant (such as Hachette Filipacchi, which is apparently included so the author can talk about John F. Kennedy Jr. and George). These additional anecdotes are an amplification rather than a distraction, however, as they do nothing to undermine his fundamentally sound grasp on the new media phenomenon.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Motavalli is a former Internet columnist for the New York Post and a media consultant who has worked at Inside Media, Adweek, and MCI Telecommunications. This, his first book, which he started in April 2000, was intended as an added chapter to the ongoing history of what then looked like a flourishing Internet business. Serious blunders then occurred when competing old-economy media companies squared off for domination in the new arena of the Internet, causing what could have been a "flourishing business" to come to an abrupt end. The book covers the early 1990s to January 2000, when dreams of domination were on the minds of media heavyweights from Time, Inc., Disney, News Corp., the New York Times Company, and others. In the end, an alliance was born when AOL merged with Time Warner, creating a marriage of new and old media and causing other media Internet companies (e.g., Disney's GoNetwork, NBCi, MTV Online, and AT&T's Worldnet) to bow out and disappear from sight. Though the author is a well-versed media insider, he offers too much detail about the frenzied activity documented, making his book sometimes difficult to follow. A marginal purchase for business collections. Bellinda Wise, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st edition (August 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670899801
• ISBN-13: 978-0670899807
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,799,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars His crystal ball was badly, badly broken, July 28, 2005

By 

Andreas Drexler (Goleta, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet (Hardcover)

Having the advantage of hindsight, I picked up this book 3 years after publication and saw that he had concluded with the hilariously off prediction that AOL would dominate the AOL-TW merger and that this power would be the king of media.

He got just about everything wrong with this wrapup prediction. The AOL types were spanked in disgrace, to the point of their name being taken off the bldg in New York, and TW is not ruling the roost by a long shot.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jumping the Gun?, October 10, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet (Hardcover)

Indeed, it is a well written book with excellent first hand accounts from the inside of the media giants during their flailings.

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Looking back 4 years to look forward....the media wars....old/new, June 24, 2006

By 

Joyce Schwarz "Joyce Schwarz" (Marina Del Rey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet (Hardcover)

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!