Gerald Levin, former Time Warner CEO, dead at 84

AP Business Reporter SAN FRANCISO >> Gerald Levin, who led Time Warner Media into a disastrous $182 billion merger with the internet provider America Online, died Wednesday at the age of 84, according to media reports.

Levin had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, although his cause of death was not immediately reported. The former executive’s grandchild, Jake Maia Arlow, confirmed his passing to the New York Times and the Washington Post, but did not reply to a request for confirmation from The Associated Press.

Levin joined Time in the early 1970s as the company was just starting to shift its focus from print magazines to cable television. A lawyer-turned-idealist who had spent a few years working for an international development company in Colombia and Tehran, Levin found himself captivated by the transformative potential of business, particularly that of cable television, according to “Fools Rush In,” a 2004 book by journalist Nina Munk.

Levin once even drew an equivalence between his newfound passion and his former development work, according to the book, saying “there’s very little difference between water, electricity and television.” That perspective led him in 1972 to a position as vice president of programming at Time’s fledgling cable network, Home Box Office, later to be known simply as HBO.

Within two years, Levin, then HBO president, managed to convince Time brass to invest the then-immense sum of $7.5 million to distribute HBO’s signal via satellite, negating the need for even more expensive investments in laying cable or building microwave networks across the U.S.