Entertaindom.com has become the first casualty of the AOL Time Warner merger. As part of overall company trimming, Entertaindom will fold up operations on February 1st. The content from the site will most likely be combined with series on the Warner Bros. Online site. How many employees will lose their jobs is yet to be known. However, insiders say that over the next few weeks there will be major cuts throughout Time Warner. Already 400 staffers have been cut from news division CNN. The completion of the merger has long loomed over Entertaindom. After the merger announcement in January 2000, Time Warner lost interest in the site, which was originally intended to be the company's Internet entertainment building block. Initial plans had the site going public, but when that was scrapped many would-be Internet millionaires within Entertaindom became very angry. In April 2000, Entertaindom.com president and CEO Jim Moloshok, executive VP Jim Banister and third-in-command Jeff Weiner all exited the company. Soon after, Kevin Tsujihara, Warner Bros. senior VP of strategic planning and development and the man behind melding Time Warner and AOL strategies, was made head of Entertaindom and Warner Bros. Online. This early move was seen as a move to consolidate Time Warner's online assets in preparation for its merger with America Online.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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