Studio Group Picks CEO for Video Venture

AOL Time Warner Inc., Sony Corp. and three other film studios appointed Jim Ramo, a former Hughes Electronics Corp. official, chief executive of their joint service to deliver movies over the Internet.

The Los Angeles-based venture, which includes Viacom Inc., Vivendi Universal and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., also changed the name of its service to Movielink from Moviefly, the companies said. Announced Aug. 16, the planned service will offer Web users access to recent movie releases as well as film libraries.

Movielink will compete with a similar venture formed by Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. called Movies.com.

The film studios are trying to tap into a market for video on demand that’s expected to rise to almost $2 billion by 2005 from $65million last year, according to research firm Yankee Group.

“DirecTV wasn’t born overnight, and this business won’t be something that jumps overnight,” Ramo said in an interview, referring to the Hughes satellite-television unit at which he was executive vice president from 1990 to 1997. “It’s very much of a long-term development, a long-term business plan.”

Ramo said he expects the service to start sometime in the second half of the year.

Ramo was most recently at Shelter Ventures, consulting for communications companies and investing in new media for the $200-million fund, the statement said. After leaving DirecTV in 1997, he was chief operating officer of TVN Entertainment and CEO of Geocast Network Systems until 2000.

On the New York Stock Exchange, AOL Time Warner shares fell $1.20, or 4.3%, to $26.70; MGM slipped 50 cents to $19.62, and Viacom’s Class B shares fell 40 cents to $39.25. Also on the NYSE, Sony’s American depositary receipts dropped $1.50 to close at $43.70, and Vivendi’s ADRs fell 74 cents to $45.57.