Why News Corp. Should Buy AOL

 Wired reporting:
OK, everyone knows there’s history here. AOL’s last merger with a big television, movie and news-media company was a disaster. So was News Corp.’s last big purchase of a web company offering an active community. But Time Warner and MySpace then (or now) couldn’t do for AOL and News Corp. what AOL and News Corp. could do for each other today.
Let’s start with the fundamentals. As Kara Swisher writes at AllThingsD (owned, through subsidiaries, by News Corp), AOL’s stock price has dropped to the point where the company is ripe for a takeover.
“It’s almost free, given its cash on hand,” says one large investor: $458.7 million, against a market cap of just $1.09 billion. AOL’s stock is just $10.22 a share, following lower-than-estimated revenues in the second quarter.
News Corp, on the other hand, just issued a quarterly statement containing what Rupert Murdoch called “the most robust balance sheet in our history.” It’s quite a turn around from just a month ago, when the company’s future appeared to be in doubt.
...The web is the future of media delivery. Rupert Murdoch knows this. This is why he appointed John McKinley, an AOL veteran, to be News Corp’s chief technology officer and President of Technology for its digital media group in February. With MySpace, Murdoch just made the wrong bet.
AOL and Huffington Post have found all new ways to monetize the work of millions of contributors, striking a better balance between original reporting, online celebrities and aggregate crowdsourcing.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/why-news-corp-should-buy-aol/all/1http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/why-news-corp-should-buy-aol/all/1