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Turner staying at AOL
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December 21, 2001: 12:08 p.m. ET
CNN founder will retain vice chairman title despite reports he would leave.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - CNN founder Ted Turner will keep his position with AOL Time Warner Inc., despite earlier reports that he had been forced out of the media conglomerate.
The company, which owns CNN/Money, issued a brief statement Friday from Turner that said he would be staying in the position of vice chairman.
"I am very pleased to extend my contract as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner and am enthusiastic about working with Steve Case, Dick Parsons, Bob Pittman and the rest of the management team," said Turner's statement.
Case is chairman of AOL Time Warner (AOL: down $0.73 to $32.05, Research, Estimates) while Parsons is co-chief operating officer and the incoming CEO of the company and Pittman is co-chief operating officer who will hold that title by himself when Parsons' promotion takes effect in May.
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Ted Turner
Will remain as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner. | |
Turner, the company's largest individual shareholder, had clashed with AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin in recent years. He was quoted earlier this fall as saying that his biggest regret about selling Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner Inc. in 1996 was that he wished he had instead bought Time Warner, "so I could have fired Jerry Levin before he fired me."
Earlier this month Levin announced plans to retire in May, a couple of years earlier than expected. Parsons was quoted a week later saying he wanted Turner to remain with the company.
Turner, 63, began his business career as an account executive for Turner Advertising Co., which primarily handled outdoor advertising. He became president of the company in 1963, and in 1970 moved into the television business with the purchase of Channel 17 in Atlanta, which became WTBS, the first cable superstation. He started CNN in 1980.
Shares of AOL were slightly lower in Friday morning trading. 
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