Sumner Lovin' AOL Takeover

from the idle-speculation dept

It's all speculation, of course, but apparently Sumner Redstone can't stop talking about the possibilities of buying AOL Time Warner and merging it with Viacom. Of course, merging these two media giants would likely cause quite a bit of activity in the Justice Department who would be very unlikely to approve such a deal (no matter what the FCC thinks the media ownership percentages should be). One possible offshoot of this deal would be for it to be a three-way deal, where Barry Diller's InterActive Corp. would take on the AOL portion, and Time Warner would go to Viacom. At first, I was skeptical that Diller and Redstone would work together - since the two had a fierce battle over Paramount not so long ago. However, they're apparently on good terms these days and have even talked about working together to buy Vivendi Universal. Just picture that: Viacom Time Warner Universal as a single company, with Diller's InterActive becoming AOL InterActive, running Expedia, Match.com and Vivendi's entertainment properties (some of which they bought from Diller in the first place). Talk about media monsters...