What do you get for that?

Well, a 4,100-title library, the James Bond franchise, the Pink Panther franchise, part of the upcoming Hobbit movie, some television channels, and the rights to the show Stargate.

Last year, according to Bloomberg, the historic studio made only one film, a re-make of Fame. There are plans to release a Bond film in 2011, but as of November, there was no production schedule for it.

The studio is currently about $4 billion in debt. Investors are hoping to get $2 billion, but most analysts seem to think they'd take considerably less.

But it’s starting to feel like a long time ago now, and pretty much everyone involved has mumbled some kind of mea culpa and tried to move on. Now, you want to talk about a serious media-merger hangover? Check out Vivendi, the French water and telecoms company that bought the old Seagram a decade ago in a dot-com–era bid to be a junior league AOL–Time Warner. That transnational nightmare is still going strong. Last week, the hapless French conglomerate was slapped with a jury judgment in a Manhattan federal court that accused it of recklessly misleading investors about its financial health before and after the October 2000 Seagram deal. Depending on whose lawyer you listen to, the company is on the hook for anywhere from $9 billion to (according to Vivendi’s side) an incalculable but far smaller figure. Vivendi says it will appeal the case, but there is so much lingering toxicity and pathos around the time the company was known as Vivendi Universal that it is practically the Love Canal of media constructs.

In fact, it’s worth remembering that this year’s media mega-mega-merger—General Electric’s handoff of NBC Universal to Comcast—can be traced to Vivendi’s near-collapse after its stab at empire-building under the heady leadership of former CEO Jean-Marie Messier, once known lovingly as J6M, short for Jean-Marie Messier Moi-Même Maître du Monde. En Anglais: “Me, myself, master of the world.”

As part of its efforts to get back on its feet after Mr. Messier’s debt-addled reign, Vivendi sold the remnants of Seagram—the Universal film and TV studios and theme parks and a passel of cable networks—to NBC in 2004, keeping the Universal Music business and 20 percent of the new NBC Universal as part of the bargain. NBC’s struggles lately have been well documented, but it was Vivendi’s desire to finally unload its last vestiges of the business—which it did recently—that pushed GE to offload NBC U altogether. Under far less flashy management, Vivendi has gone on to buy video game company Activision and a phone company in Brazil.  

And the shareholder verdict last week is not even the last of it. Still to come, Vivendi will be back in court to square off against combative billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media, which in 2003 filed a similar suit accusing Mr. Messier, his chief financial officer and Vivendi of “fraud, misrepresentation and concealment” related to its dot-com deal spree. Strangely, while the jury last week found that Vivendi bore responsibility for duping its shareholders, it ruled that Mr. Messier and the company’s finance chief at the time did not.

But Mr. Messier isn’t entirely out of the woods. In addition to facing Mr. Malone, he will also be in a French criminal court later this year to stand trial for share manipulation relating to this whole fiasco, and, if convicted, could face several years in prison. This time, the taint extends to former Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., who is one of several former Vivendi colleagues who have been ordered to stand trial along with Mr. Messier. Mr. Bronfman has already had to wear the shroud of having wiped out much of his famous family’s fortune through the infamous merger, and had moved on by buying and running Warner Music Group. (His lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.) One can only imagine how much he is looking forward to reliving the good old days in Paris avec J6M.

editorial@observer.com

Mr. Isaacson, the CEO of The Aspen Institute and the former top editor at Time, started his career in newspapers, and was also an engineer of Pathfinder, Time Inc.'s early—but failed—news portal, so you'd think he would be a hard-core print partisan. Not so:

After sifting through some possible industry-saving scenarios, like eliminating papers' print editions (hello, Christian Science Monitor!) or waiting out "the long winter," Mr. Isaacson makes a proposal:

One of the obstacles standing in the way of users paying for content, according to Mr. Isaacson, is Internet service providers, which "get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to the Web's trove of free content and services. As a result, it is not in their interest to facilitate easy ways for media creators to charge for their content."

What's strange about that statement is the fact that Time Warner Cable—which announced in May 2008 its intention to spin off from Time Warner but hasn't been approved to do so yet—is the country's second-largest provider of cable and boasts of delivering 8.3 million high-speed services to residential customers in 28 states on its Company Highlights page.

Presumably some of those end users are reading newspapers—not to mention Time, Inc. publications—for free.

That is, when they're not watching pirated Warner Brothers movies like The Dark Knight, which Brian Stelter and Brad Stone in today's New York Times report has been illegally downloaded "more than seven million times around the world."

She’ll combine the duplex with a 1,987-square-foot apartment she bought for $2,750,000 from a Salt Lake City attorney in 2004, according to city records.

“I love the building,” said Ms. Mercuris, who returned a call at night after getting off a flight from the Hamptons. She’s been coming to New York about once a month, but will visit more now that she has the new space. “I have a lot of clients in the city—mostly infomercial clients, direct-response.”

Did her telemarketing money buy the apartments? “I paid cash for them, so I would think so. The second one I just bought for $8.3 million. So, yes, the answer’s yes.”

Ms. Mercuris essentially last made the news in 1996, when a firm called Travel Investors Inc. was sued for deceptive practices. She had been president of the group’s telemarketing subsidiary. When asked about it, she said, “That was in the ’90s,” and then suddenly began discussing Sex and the City. “I was a big viewer of the show, and I was in New York a lot for business, and probably because of the show I bought an apartment there, and doing things in the city I was seeing the girls do—I’m pretty much the same age as Sarah Jessica Parker,” she said. Ms. Mercuris is single.

The Better Business Bureau processed 131 complaints about Quality Resources in the past three years, and several Web sites list complaints from people who were called by Quality telemarketers who already knew the last four digits of their credit cards. “That’s, you know, the way we market,” Ms. Mercuris explained. “We really don’t get many complaints, once people understand how that works.”

As for her spread, the two bedrooms on the new duplex’s top floor will be turned into one master suite with a walk-in closet and a sitting room; she’s combining the duplex’s lower half with her older apartment, making three bedrooms and one immense space with a kitchen, bar and dining room. The floors will be travertine marble with black accents. “I like very neutral warm colors,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d call it—traditional contemporary?”

Asked if she feels guilty about telemarketing, she said her firm only makes calls about products people need and want. For example: “We’re actively marketing a discount health product to consumers that don’t have health insurance.”

mabelson@observer.com

Get ready for journalists to start another round of the "Richard Parsons, future New York City mayoral candidate" meme.

Flashback: AOL-Time Warner's New Chief, Richard Parsons, Makes His Social Debut, December 23, 2001.

The party was thrown at the Landmarc restaurant at the Time Warner Center.

That would be the same Time Warner Center that is home to CNN--i.e. MSNBC's rival in the ongoing battle for second place in the cable news wars. In case anyone missed the not-so-subtle we're-taking-over-your-territory jab, the NBC crew decorated the environs with various placards taking potshots at their rivals.

On one, Mr. Olbermann's face beamed over the words "MSNBC this way" with an arrow pointing up and "CNN this way," with an arrow pointing down (vaguely in the direction of a coat check).

Zing!

MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines told the Media Mob that the MSNBC promotions could have been much more pervasive. According to Mr. Gaines, NBC tried to buy up a substantial amount of the advertising space in the Time Warner Center-electronic billboards, kiosks, etc--for the entire day. But, according to Mr. Gaines, The Related Companies (which controls the advertising space at the development) eventually balked at the ads poking fun of CNN--i.e. their major tenant in the building.

"You can't blame us for trying," said Mr. Gaines. "We picked the venue on purpose and wanted to have as much fun with it as possible."

Mr Bewkes has long been since as Mr. Parsons' heir apparent, and is considered more likely to shake up the company by, for instance, selling off the struggling AOL, which recently announced plans to lay off aorund 2000 employees.

Time Warner has denied the report, calling it "a rumor". We've put our own call in to the media conglomerate, and will update if we hear anything.

AOL spokesperson Anne Bentley said the move reflects a shift in AOL's priorities from its email, IM and internet access business focus to becoming a major player in the advertising industry.

“We’re putting the advertising network at the front and center now,” she said.

And they’re certainly spending freely on it. AOL will pay about $170 million over the next 15 years for its 152,000-square-foot spread on the fourth and fifth floors of the media-centric building in the Village. That’s $69 per square foot for the first five years of the lease, $74 for the next five and $79 for the last five, said a source familiar with the deal. They’ll move in next spring, said Ms. Bentley.

AOL’s gain also is The Nielsen Group’s loss. The Nielsen Group—formerly VNU—will pack up in the building’s fourth and fifth floors and head upstairs, where Billboard, Adweek and Hollywood Reporter employees will squeeze into the company’s five other floors.

AOL is sending its C.E.O. Randy Falco and its C.O.O. Ron Grant to 770 Broadway, along with about 400 employees who were located at the 177,641 square feet that AOL had at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, their other city location.

In addition to The Nielsen Group, Viacom is also located at 770 Broadway. The Staubach Company brokered this deal for AOL, ending a prolonged slump for the brokerage firm that hasn’t landed a deal of this size in over a year. The lead broker on the deal, Martin Horner, did not return a call for comment.

In Utica, the Communication Workers of America has launched an agressive campaign against Time Warner, complete with print, radio and television ads.

The aim of the campaign is to enable 35 Time Warner employees unionize. Yes, that's a tiny number. But according to a person working with the union, most of the industry is unionized, and this could be the start of a much larger fight.

I guess we'll see.

The five-bedroom house, east of Third Avenue, has a second-floor balcony overlooking the 39-foot-long backyard garden, plus a two-camera security system with a flat-screen monitor.

The couple signed a contract in late February, less than one month after Ms. Bartiromo’s friend Todd Thompson, the head of Citigroup’s wealth-management branch, was publicly fired for “inappropriately showering corporate resources” on Ms. Bartiromo, according to a published report. For example, Mr. Thompson reportedly booted executives off a cross-continental Citigroup flight to be alone with the impeccably brunette anchoress.

But CNBC—the cable network where Ms. Bartiromo hosts the most popular financial-news show in the nation—rushed to the support of its “Money Honey” (a nickname that Ms. Bartiromo recently registered as a trademark). So did her husband Jonathan, the son of outlandish financier Saul Steinberg.

According to public records, which list the couple’s old address at a nearby apartment, their new townhouse recently belonged to Michael and Melissa Slocum, who bought it for a relatively steep $6.8 million in August 2004.

Photographs from the recent Stribling listing show the townhouse as a customarily fancy Upper East Side place with big ruffled curtains and bigger chandeliers. Better yet, the place has four working wood-burning fireplaces, a 32-foot-long kitchen, and a wet bar between the second floor’s dining and drawing rooms.

Will the TV go in the 342-square-foot family room? “I watch her at the Big Board every single day/While she’s reporting you best stay out of her way,” the late Joey Ramone sang about Ms. Bartiromo. “I watch her every day/ I watch her every night/ She’s really outta sight.”

Gap Heir Buys in the Pierre for $2.9 M.

Fortunes built on khakis and turtlenecks can buy grand rooms in the Pierre Hotel—rooms that have absurdly abundant space for khakis and turtlenecks. Billionaire William Fisher, whose parents founded the Gap, has paid $2.9 million for a Pierre co-op with two bedrooms, twice-daily maid service and a colossal dressing room.

Naturally, the Pierre apartment has deluxe Fifth Avenue views.

“The tops of the trees are precisely at eye level,” said listing broker Max Dobens, a vice president of the Jacky Teplitzky Group at Prudential Douglas Elliman, “so it’s like floating in the ocean, looking at the tops of the waves, with your head bobbing in the water.”

More importantly, the hotel room comes with a stocked mini-bar. And yet: “If you own in the Pierre,” Mr. Dobens pointed out, “it’s not particularly classy to be hitting the mini-bars.”

There are classier touches, like the reception hall, which comes before the 27-foot-long living room overlooking Central Park.

Both bedrooms have their own walk-in closets, yet the master suite’s dressing area stands out. “Normally, you would have to get dressed in the bedroom itself,” the broker explained, “but here it’s the classic old-world elegance: You get out of the shower, you get dressed, and you enter the bedroom once you’re dressed.”

One of the dressing room’s four closets, for example, stretches 18 square feet.

Mr. Fisher and his wife Sakurako bought the five-room apartment from the estate of Robert M. Shapiro. On the deed, the Fishers’ address is listed on Jackson Street in San Francisco, a few feet away from the second-oldest golf club in California.

Sadly, they’ll be paying $5,469 every month to maintain their Pierre apartment. “Yes, that’s high,” Mr. Dobens said. “This property is for people who are at a financial level so that maintenance is a non-issue. If you ask how much the maintenance is, you don’t belong at the Pierre.” Ouch.

Maintenance costs are lower elsewhere, but then elsewhere “you don’t have the people in the elevator pushing the buttons.”

Time Warner Chief Cedes Tribeca Summit Dominance for $2.2 M.

Manhattan tycoons should have bad toupees and bad tempers and badly decorated Fifth Avenue triplexes. But Dick Parsons, the mild chairman and C.E.O. of Time Warner Inc., has sold off one of his comparatively modest apartments atop 166 Duane Street.

According to city records, which listed the property in wife Laura’s name, the three-bedroom loft was sold for $2,218,063 last month to the Pittsburgh architect Leonard Perfido and his wife Ruth. That’s a baffling fall from the $2.9 million that the Parsons paid for the Tribeca loft (labeled Penthouse A) in July 2003.

Mr. Parsons and his wife won’t be leaving 166 Duane Street. “I don’t want to get into his personal life or investments, but he’s definitely staying in the building,” Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler told The Observer. “He’s a resident of Tribeca and loves it.”

There’s a lot to love: The Time Warner chief still has his five-bedroom Penthouse B, which he bought in 1999, when 166 Duane was converted into condos.

That sponsor unit had been listed for $3.7 million.

Will Mr. Parsons miss his newly relinquished apartment? According to a Corcoran Group listing, the smaller 2,520-square-foot Penthouse A had three bedrooms, plus an 810-square-foot private garden (landscaped by two name-brand designers: parks mastermind Patricia McCobb and modernist decorator Michael Formica).

According to floor plans, the building’s 125-foot-long roof is split into space for each penthouse, plus a “common roof terrace”—which means that Mr. Parsons has given up precious dominance of the building’s summit.

How un-mogul-like.

Consider this: Carl Icahn, the corporate raider who has called for Mr. Parsons’ ouster, owns a 14,000-square-foot spread atop the Cesar Pelli–designed Museum Tower, according to the database PropertyShark.com.

Mr. Parsons’ Tribeca penthouse is now merely 4,955 square feet—about one-third the size of Mr. Icahn’s.

Southampton Estate Battles for Buyer; It’s Only $48 M., Give or Take

Things don’t always go perfectly for gated Southampton estates, even 10.44-acre sprawls where the lakeside Georgian master house has 13 bedrooms and the guest cottage is shaded by a tulip tree.

Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein was twice reported to be in contract for Old Trees Estate on Lake Agawam. (He has enough money for the estate, previously listed at $48 million: He was compensated $54.8 million for his seven months helming Goldman last year.)

“That deal never came to fruition,” said Sotheby’s International Realty broker Harald Grant, an overlord of Hamptons realty.

So the listing has switched to Mr. Grant from Prudential Douglas Elliman. And the price tag has somehow gone up: “The asking price is a little more than $48 million,” he said.

The reported agreement between Mr. Blankfein and the seller, financier Donald Burns, was around $41 million.

But Douglas Elliman’s Jay Flagg, one of the old listing brokers, didn’t admit defeat. He said this week that customers who had been shown the house while Elliman had the listing were still “continuing negotiations.”

And yet his colleague Raymond Smith was less upbeat. “We had the exclusive. I’m not saying it’s done done, but it’s pretty much that way.”

Why the broker switch? “It happens all the time,” Mr. Smith said. “If something doesn’t sell, they change horses—that’s the way it works. People think they’re going to get a better situation, but it’s the same-old, same-old. The new guy’s going to do the same stuff I did, just as I would.”

The new guy, Mr. Grant, will likely show off the Atlantic Ocean views, the tennis court and the three-bedroom pig barn from the 1800’s, “which has seen its share of swinging summer soirees,” according to the old listing.

Plus there’s a regal heritage: Architect Goodhue Livingston built the place for himself in 1911, and hosted dignitaries and royalty there. It’s since been rewired and renovated. “It’s like a new house,” Mr. Flagg said, “that’s been enveloped by the old body.”

All it needs now is new suitors and a closed contract.