Spring 2002 - Haverford College

Jerry Levin
LEVIN I’m not sure I understood the
question.
KALB A kind of hedge fund for beginners
is the way I understood it.
Q. A growing hedge fund, a growing
hedge fund to encourage young artists
who don’t have the kind of, you know…
LEVIN We have several examples. HBO
for example, each year, I’m not even sure
what the amounts are anymore, at some
points they’re up to $25,000 apiece, to
encourage new artists, young people, particularly
with screenplays, that are very
hard to get produced these days. So, we
have various examples around the company.
That’s the most prominent because
I’m very interested in things that come
from that.
Q. I’m a freshman at the George
Washington University. In today’s New
York Times there was an important Op-Ed
that suggests companies like yours need to
be doing more to make broadband
Internet more physically and financially
affordable for the 90 percent of the
population that does not have access.
What is AOL Time Warner’s plan?
LEVIN This is, you know, the common
phrase is the digital divide, and we don’t
want to develop an information aristocracy.
Here’s an example where public policy
and private companies, they’re just not
working together. Time Warner agreed
several years ago with the then-head of
the FCC that in every one of our cable
franchises for a certain amount of rate regulation
relief we would build out particularly
broadband connections to all parts
of our franchise, not just the higher economic
areas, but also that we would serve
schools, libraries, and all public institutions.
We’re just about there. What the
public policy needs to do is to somehow
superimpose on not only the cable companies
but also the telephone companies,
in exchange for probably loosening regulations.
So, this is a case where no one
company can do it, but there is a way of
kind of prodding some of the companies
to continue to do it. It’s a real issue
because, increasingly, broadband capability
and the ability to deliver information
on demand, any kind of information, is
going to represent, kind of, the learning
tool of the future. So we’ve just, my final
answer is there needs to be more public,
private cooperation—that we actually
have the same objective that’s underneath
your question.
Q. I’m a socio-linguist with an interest in
media and I also teach at George
Washington in the anthropology department.
I was interested in your lighter
remarks in which you were saying that
you want to put the poetry back into your
life and you were talking in particular
about your own experience as sort of
knowing too much about things like going
to the movies, so that it was no longer a
sort of poetic experience. And of course,
that made me think of the fact that for
many of us, it’s not that different, because
we see the previews and we read, you
know, the film reviews and a lot of these
things. And, I’m wondering if your own
experience has made you think, in any
way, about what the world of journalism
might be in the future. I believe you said
that you thought a major role was to
understand.
LEVIN Well, I do think there’s a qualitative
difference—getting as much information
out so that people can make their
own judgments about every issue including
lifestyle issues—what movie to go to—
and you know what’s available locally as
well as how to understand the anthrax
threat. But the qualitative difference that
I was describing for myself, by understanding
the construction of a film, understanding
the marketing parameters, it’s
just so, the taxonomy is so detailed, so
sterile that it really doesn’t compare to that
wonderful process of reading reviews and
talking to friends and you know, getting
some kind of assimilation about a particular
work of art. The innards of its construction
and the budget, “Matrix” II and
III are being shot now by the Wachowsky
brothers. It’s the most remarkable kind of
movie making, but it’s all part of a financial
plan that we have. I can visit the set,
but it’s not the same joy I had as a
Haverford student when I went to see a
good foreign film.
Q. Do you plan to travel, most specifically
to Israel? Could you be next year in
Jerusalem?
LEVIN I have been traveling quite a bit
lately, not only on behalf of the company,
but recognizing that, in many cases public
policy around the world whether it’s in
China or Germany or elsewhere, involves
a lot of what we do, but also to try and
be helpful. You know, what’s happening
in Israel with the Palestinians is, obviously,
very significant. I’ve had the opportunity
to meet with many of the leaders
in Israel and, no, I don’t think I’ll be playing
a particular role, although I’ll mention
two things to you. First, Shimon
Peres has something called the Peres
Center for Peace and he has joined with
Kofi Annan, a part of the UN that
engages in specific projects, and they
have a notion, an idealistic notion, of
“I would make the outright statement that I think the American Dream has been
held together in many difficult times of peril, you know, whether that was the
Vietnam War, or the McCarthy Era, or the Depression, by the press. I honestly
think and believe that.”
30 Haverford Magazine