AOL Time Warner Board Strips 'AOL' from Name

At a board of directors meeting in New York Thursday, AOL Time Warner officers elected to drop "AOL" from the conglomerate's name. The company will become Time Warner Inc., returning to its former New York Stock Exchange symbol "TWX." The transition is expected to be complete within the next few weeks.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dick Parsons said: "We believe that our new name better reflects the portfolio of our valuable businesses and ends any confusion between our corporate name and the America Online brand name for our investors, partners and the public."

"Today, all of our businesses - from America Online, Warner Bros. Entertainment, New Line Cinema, TBS and CNN to Time Warner Cable, HBO, Time Inc., The WB and Warner Music Group - are making important contributions to the whole company.”

America Online has been hemorrhaging subscribers, reporting in July that it lost 846,000 narrowband customers in the same quarter. Its financial solvency was also called into question after AOL restated its earnings by $45 billion, and posted a record breaking yearly loss of almost $100 billion. The early days of 2003 saw a subsequent re-shuffling of AOL executives.

Meanwhile, AOL has been fighting its way into broadband, previewing AOL 9.0 Optimized, and kicking off its "Members First" download campaign.