The company estimates that it will take a $100 million to $125 million charge for the layoffs in its third quarter.

Although this follows cuts of about 2,400 jobs earlier in the year after the merger closed, those cuts were distributed through the merged companies' several divisions -- CNN, the Time magazines, New Line Cinema, Warner Music, a few at AOL online and others.

Bring On the Caffeine

There were executive shifts as well in Tuesday's announcement, most notably, I suspect, moving Jon Sacks into running the online service and the interactive business. Jon, I should confess, is an old friend, and I think he's just the kind of shark AOL needs to shake up this sleepy business.

The sleepiness of the business -- still -- persuades me that these cuts, though widely anticipated and widely praised before they were finally announced Tuesday, still aren't enough. Nor necessarily are they for the right reasons.

A friend at AOL online -- not Sacks, I promise you! -- speaks often of what he found when he came to AOL from Netscape: what he calls "a latte culture."

"They move sooooo slowly," he says. "Getting things done takes forever. The company suffers from a kind of atherosclerotic cardiac block, the result of doing so well for so long. The AOL people see themselves as the saviors of Time Inc., and while that apparently wasn't a very dynamic culture either, nothing about now being joined at the hip to Time Warner seems likely to shake up the AOL people.

"It's sooo laid back, sooo comfortable, sooo self-satisfied: 'We're the leaders and always will be. Now go away.' That attitude is prevalent."

Old Habits Hard to Break

That assessment matches my own, based on my contacts with AOL people. Good people, but awfully set in their ways -- just as AOL as a company has been awfully set in its ways.

Missing its revenue targets last quarter may have shaken up AOL internally, maybe enough to shake people out of their lassitude. I'm watching for signs, but I don't see cutting 1,700 people as enough of a sign.

A vigorous, attacking AOL online would be a sensational competitor. Maybe we're about to see that. But it's far from definite. This feels a lot more like an effort to finally be seen as spreading the pain equitably: to reassure the magazine people, the music people, the TV people and the movie people that AOL isn't going to run Time Warner properties like a group of second-class cash cows while it protects the "true AOL people," the online folks.

Sure hope I'm wrong.