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(More customer reviews)"To the End of Time" is about the merger between Time Inc and Warner Communications during the eighties written primarily from the Time Inc. perspective. Richard Clurman worked for Time for over twenty years so has a lot of inside knowledge of the company, people and history. He reviews the background of the two companies and for the Warner side focuses on Steve Ross as the man that built Warner Communications into a successful entertainment company. The main themes in the book are the impact on the merger of the two very different cultures of the two companies, the merger process itself, Steve Ross's ability to charm and persuade in a way that made it seem like it was the other person's idea and finally the beginning of the diminishing of print journalism. The last one is even truer today then it was 18 years ago when the book was written.
Richard Clurman even with strong ties to Time provided a fairly objective view of both sides although it was clear that he was more familiar with the Time side and to be fair his thesis was the impact on Time. Connie Bruck's "Master of The Game" is a good book to get the opposite perspective from the Warner side. At the time the book was written the author could not know if the merger would be successful and in fact at that time Wall Street had a very unfavorable opinion. However knowing what we know now the real value in Time Warner is the content (movies, HBO, network and cable programming, DC comics/Batman). The plumbing (cable companies) are being spun off and the print side still has an iconic aura but the readership has continued to decline and is more dependent on on-line presence. AOL was a bad bet but that came after the subject of this book. So one could say the content side of both sides of the merger are doing very well and therefore support the original instincts of the architects of the merger.
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