Facetime July 3, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Jerry Levin on What He's Learned in His Second Life

(page 2 of 2)

Levin and Case whoop it up in 2000 when Time Warner and AOL merged Ruby Washington/The New York TimesRedux

The Moonview experience is not cheap. The figure that I've seen is $175,000 a year.
In fact, we have many customized programs, and they're totally customized from a pricing point of view. A half day is $2,500, a full day is $5,000. And the only minimum is $15,000. We have three-day programs, weekly programs, monthly programs, yearly programs. It's totally flexible. So there's no one price point.

Do you miss the excitement of business?
I can't say that I miss the intensity. I do, however, still get box-office numbers every morning. And I read with great interest what's happening not only in the financial world but also in the political world. And I send whatever energy I can to those who can make a difference in this world.

Some of your critics have complained that you never apologized for what has been described as the AOL Time Warner debacle. Do you think you need to do that and make peace with those who still harbor hard feelings?
I don't know whether an apology is in order, but just maybe a feeling or a statement that I tried my hardest to do what I thought was best for everybody in the company at the sacrifice of my own well-being. There was and still is an enormously significant idea in the merger of Time Warner and AOL. It did not deliver at the time what it was meant to, I think because of the cultural clash that took place. But the importance of the Internet and the digital transformation of Time Warner continues to this day. For those who experienced financial difficulty, of course, I do [apologize]. I'm sorry about that. I really am.

Do you have any regrets in terms of the way you lived your life in Corporate America?
I think I'm the poster child for not paying attention to the most important thing in the world. The death of my son was probably the pivotal experience of my life. To not understand that, to not deal with it, to just return and work even harder—I hope people can understand and learn from that because I just put an iron curtain in front of my emotions. And our business culture actually encourages that: Your ability to negotiate and succeed comes not from being emotionally vulnerable, it comes from being almost a testosterone superman. What a terrible failing on my part not to have taken that tragedy and tried to understand.

Maria Bartiromo is the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell .

Reader Discussion

 

BW Mall - Sponsored Links

Buy a link now!