Leonsis, Miller, and... Calacanis?
Jonathan Miller is out at AOL, replaced by Randy Falco, president and COO of NBCU. A shame, I think, since this is the guy who at least publicly was the force that pushed the formerly closed giant into an open media platform (see Jonathan Miller Must Be Reading My Blog).
Sounds like the environment is going to be unfriendly to Miller's circle of supporters in the company, and other senior execs may be on the way out, too, like Kevin Conroy and Jim Bankoff.
And even Jason Calacanis, who considers Miller one of the few mentors he's had in his life, is making noises like a man with a short fuse:
[from About Jon Miller - The Jason Calacanis Weblog]I've gotten a bunch of press folks contacting me about my future at AOL now that Ted Leonsis and Jon Miller are no longer with the company. I've got nothing to say about that right now, so consider this an official "no comment."
Which I interpret -- without discussing it with Jason, at all -- as "you bet your ass I am planning to leave."
None of which is to say that Falco and whoever he pulls in won't do a good job raising revenues through more aggressive advertising, but I feel that what is really missing at AOL -- by comparison with Yahoo, for example -- is a real culture of innovation.
Let's see if Falco can accomplish that. It's clear that Miller was trying, but maybe was moving too slow.
Are you and Calcanis kidding yourselves? Jon Miller wasted four years running AOL and oversaw the decline from ~26M members to between 15M-18M, depending on who's counting and how. In that time Jon oversaw what? The launch of ... what?
Miller was completely dis-engaged and obviously knows nothing about competing with the likes of Google or Yahoo! in attracting eyeballs. When Miller came to AOL we were trying to become an ad-based business. That market dried up about the same time as Miller's arrival and his vision was to build a subscriber-based business, augmented by advertising. Millions and millions of dollars were poured into the subscription business while subscribership continued to decline. Finally, this past summer, someone woke-up, smelled the coffee and realized the need to switch to free. About time!
Jon Miller's vision extended to the tip of his nose, and no further. As a co-worker said, "I don't know Falco, but the board could've selected someone at random from the phone book and done no worse than Miller.
Posted by: Rich | November 16, 2006 at 11:41 AM