Dick Parsons Picks His Battles

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Sept. 20 at 10:52 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

Dick Parsons has had a tough go of it at Time Warner(TWX Quote). When he took over as CEO of the company in late 2002, after Jerry Levin left, he had a lot of difficulties to deal with.

The AOL subsidiary was not only stagnating, it was a disaster. The situation ultimately led to a $100 billion writeoff and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations. This raises the one mark you could put against Parsons: He was president of Time Warner when the merger with AOL was announced.

The music business was also in trouble, at least in part because of the rise in P2P networks such as Napster, which enabled potential customers to download and swap music files for free. ...