PRODIGY WILL GET SWIFT KICK.Byline: Steve Lohr The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Last spring, as IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) was looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. a new chief executive for Prodigy Services, the stumbling, stodgy stodg·y adj. stodg·i·er, stodg·i·est 1. a. Dull, unimaginative, and commonplace. b. Prim or pompous; stuffy: on-line service it owns jointly with Sears, Roebuck & Co., the candidates were summoned to IBM's headquarters in Armonk. One candidate was Edward Bennett, a cable television executive. When asked what he thought of Prodigy, he replied: ``Slow, lame and ugly. The Brady Bunch of the on-line world.'' His candor was rewarded. Bennett, a 49-year-old former Viacom executive who once headed MTV's VH1 rock-music network, became president of Prodigy in May. And there he took on perhaps the biggest challenge in cyberspace Coined by William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer," it is a futuristic computer network that people use by plugging their minds into it! The term now refers to the Internet or to the online or digital world in general. See Internet and virtual reality. Contrast with meatspace. : try to revive Prodigy, a troubled laggard in the on-line services business. Eleven months later, Bennett's ambition extends beyond overhauling Prodigy. He wants to own it as well. Bennett refused to comment. But one person close to Prodigy said Bennett had recently approached Wall Street investors, seeking backing for a management buyout Management buyout (MBO) Leveraged buyout whereby the acquiring group is led by the firm's management. management buyout See going private. deal that valued Prodigy ``in the range of $500 million to $700 million.'' The person close to Prodigy also said Bennett intended to cut Prodigy's work force of 680 by more than 100 people in the next few weeks as part of a plan to streamline the on-line service. Bennett would not discuss specific plans for payroll numbers. But he does say that his vision of Prodigy's future is as a ``new media studio,'' with Prodigy backing mainly independent producers of entertainment, information and special-interest sites on the Internet's World Wide Web. It is a business model that requires fewer full-time Prodigy workers to create the same amount of on-line programming. ``What you see today at Prodigy, both as a service and as a company, will be totally different a year from now,'' Bennett said. But, interrupting himself as he often does when discussing Prodigy's future, Bennett added, ``Of course, the wild card in this is my owners.'' A wild card indeed. In February, Sears announced that it would try to sell off its half of Prodigy, while a spokesman for IBM said last week that the big computer maker was weighing its options. Buyout or no, the challenge is formidable for the Bennett team. A onetime pioneer in the on-line business, Prodigy has been relegated to a trailing third position, behind America Online See AOL. and CompuServe, a unit of H&R Block. And Bennett stepped into the underdog role at a time when all the traditional on-line services, analysts say, are endangered as more people with computers and modems prefer to tap directly into the Internet's World Wide Web. Prodigy's prospects are so bleak, some industry analysts say, that its value is not as an on-line service but as a collection of assets for phone companies or cable TV companies who want to build an Internet business quickly. They may find Prodigy's nationwide computer network and 1.7 million subscribers attractive. ``Prodigy has no momentum,'' said Russell Siegelman, vice president of the Microsoft Network See MSN. Microsoft Network - The Microsoft Network , a 7-month-old service that is mainly on the Web. ``There's just no future in that business.'' But Bennett insists there is a future for Prodigy, though one divorced from its recent past. And in his brief tenure at Prodigy, he has certainly not behaved as if he were simply dressing up a business for sale. Bennett has persuaded a couple of dozen managers, new-media designers and producers to join him, often from fast-track jobs at NBC NBC in full National Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. commercial broadcasting company. It was formed in 1926 by RCA Corp., General Electric Co. (GE), and Westinghouse and was the first U.S. company to operate a broadcast network. , ABC ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. , Viacom, Atlantic Records  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. , Wired, McKinsey and elsewhere. He has
spent aggressively to back producers of new on-line offerings, which
will appear soon on Prodigy and the Web.
And the entire service is being redesigned to become much more personalized and linked to the Web. That project, code-named Wildfire, should be completed within six months. If he stays, Bennett wants to change Prodigy into a studio-style operation, move quickly to industry-standard Web technology, and promise its key employees aA stake in a company that will one day go public. That is the vision Bennett used to lure people to Prodigy. And it was a strategy partly shaped by William Lansing William Lansing may refer to:
CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: (Color) Edward Bennet has big plans for Prodigy's on -line service. New York Times |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion