AOL Time Warner Inc, the world's biggest media company, said talks between its CNN cable-TV network and Walt Disney Co's ABC News division have ended.
"For us, the potential problems associated with the completion of such a transaction and the integration of these two distinct and great cultures was more than we want to pursue at this time," AOL Time Warner said in an e-mailed statement.
CNN has negotiated with ABC and Viacom Inc's CBS broadcast network about collaborating on news coverage to boost audiences and cut the cost of gathering information. ABC and CNN had planned to renew talks in the first quarter of the year, Jamie Kellner, head of AOL Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting division, said in November.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"There was a symmetry" between the two news operations, said Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "The problem was that it's a bit like marriage between two very large and traditional families, where the question of whether the bride and groom were compatible got lost."
The end of merger talks leaves both companies to bear independently the costs of covering a potential war in Iraq and any reduction in advertising sales.
"When a national crisis hits they're forced to get rid of some ads," Schell said.
AOL Time Warner, which has said a merged CNN would do a better job of gathering and reporting news, had also previously noted the difficulties of integrating.
AOL Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Richard Parsons in December said it's "very, very complicated in an operational manner because both brand owners, both networks, want to control their own air."
Ted Turner, who founded CNN and is AOL Time Warner's largest individual shareholder, said earlier this month in a 60 Minutes II interview that "the potential pitfalls and opportunities for disagreements exceed whatever benefits could be gained."
Disney spokeswoman Michelle Bergman declined to comment, as did CBS' Dana McClintock.
"In a climate of onward and upward optimism, these companies might have had a better chance of joining in marriage," Schell said. We are in a "climate in which mergers and media megalomania are less convincing."
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