AOL tries to sweet talk analysts

Can the good times roll again?

Top executives at AOL Time Warner will today in New York try to convince analysts the company's online unit has a profitable future, based largely around broadband. Since AOL bought old media colossus Time Warner divisions handling film, music and TV have continued to contribute the bulk of revenues and, recently at least, good profits while AOL has slumped along with the whole commercial online market. Today, according to this morning's FT, AOL TW CEO Dick Parsons will lead a meeting which sets out plans including accessing AOL from other ISPs and offering premium content meant for broadband connections. While in much of Europe AOL suffers from the slow roll out of domestic broadband from telcos based on ADSL, in the US it has to deal with the politics of the terms by which cable providers - accounting for the bulk of that country's high-speed connections - carry its service. Jonathan Miller, recently installed head of the AOL division, and Steve Case, former AOL boss and now chairman of AOL TW, will be among those making the company's case at today's briefing.