NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
AOL Time Warner is overhauling its struggling America Online Internet division, starting with a sweeping management change, the company announced Thursday.
The world's largest media company, which is the parent of CNN/Money, has been dogged by the America Online unit since shortly after the merger of AOL and Time Warner in early 2001.
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Earlier this week, the company lowered its profit and revenue targets for the America Online unit, pinning the blame on a protracted slump in online advertising sales.
Wall Street has grown increasingly impatient with the America Online business, and AOL Time Warner executives have promised to turn it around.
The unit had already seen some major management shifts recently, including the departure of Robert Pittman in July. Pittman, formerly AOL Time Warner's chief operating officer, had been charged earlier in the year with turning America Online around.
At the same time Pittman left, AOL Time Warner named Don Logan chairman of its media and communications group, which includes AOL, Time magazine, Time Warner Cable and other properties, and put Jon Miller in charge of America Online.
Logan hails from the Time Warner side of the company, as does Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner's newly minted CEO. Miller was a senior executive of USA Interactive before taking over as the leader of the America Online business.
Early Thursday, the company made a move aimed at simplifying America Online's management structure, giving Miller direct oversight of key units.
The company also named Joseph Ripp, currently America Online's chief financial officer, vice chairman of the Internet division and said it would search for a new CFO.
Additionally, America Online said J. Michael Kelly, currently chief operating officer, has been appointed chairman and CEO of the company's money-losing international unit.
The company also said it will put more resources toward developing its high-speed, or broadband, Internet access business by creating new programming. In addition to the decline in online advertising spending and a slowdown in new subscriber growth, America Online has had difficulty in shifting customers to broadband.
America Online also dismantled its Business Affairs department, the deal-making group that was key in creating many of the advertising pacts that are now at the center of federal probes into the unit.
The company said it would re-assign those employees to the business units they support.
As part of the broader management shift, America Online said Ray Oglethorpe, currently president, will retire. Jan Brandt, vice chairman and chief marketing officer, will step down from her current position and take on a new part-time role as an adviser to the company.
Shares of AOL Time Warner (AOL: down $0.40 to $12.85, Research, Estimates) fell about 3 percent in late morning New York Stock Exchange trade Thursday.
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