Mr. Falco

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what is AOL???????? I’m very devoted,” he said, having no trouble finding more ways to emphasize the point. “I’m very loyal. I’m not in here for a short ride. I’m not a one-off guy.” Mr. Falco and his new deputy, Ron Grant, made their first moves yesterday to run AOL for the long haul by doing something its employees have become accustomed to in the six tumultuous years since the company merged with Time Warner: reorganizing the executive suite. Mr. Falco will have eight people report directly to him, including Mr. Grant and AOL’s vice chairman, Ted Leonsis, as well as the top executives in areas like human resources, legal and finance, according to a memo sent yesterday to AOL employees. Mr. Grant, the president and chief operating officer, will oversee seven operating businesses, including products, platforms, programming, advertising sales, international, and the company’s large but declining business for selling Internet access. This time, Mr. Falco says, the company is properly configured to capitalize on a strategy it began following in August: focusing on free services for broadband Internet users supported by advertising. The new lineup will not only clarify who does what after the recent departure of several top executives, Mr. Falco said, it will also illustrate a clearer emphasis. (A few positions are still open, including new slots for chief marketing and “innovation” officers, he said). The company, he said, will focus on attracting a bigger audience, selling more advertising and increasing the amount of time people spend on its Web pages and using services like instant messaging. “At the center of all of this is product innovation,” he said. “It makes everything else work.” Only three weeks ago, Mr. Falco was the president and chief operating officer of NBC Universal Television, the biggest division of the media conglomerate NBC Universal, which is majority-owned by General Electric. A tall New York native bearing a glancing physical resemblance to Howard Stringer, the Sony chairman, Mr. Falco was “the quiet giant” at NBC, said a longtime colleague, David M. Zaslav, now chief executive of Discovery Communications. It was at NBC’s headquarters that Mr. Falco and some colleagues, including Bob Wright, the chairman of NBC Universal, met in August with Time Warner’s president, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, and Mr. Grant to discuss offering NBC’s programming on Time Warner’s cable systems on a video-on-demand basis. Mr. Bewkes said he had been instantly impressed by Mr. Falco, whom he thought best understood the video plan and could be a champion for it within NBC and at other TV companies. At a couple of follow-up lunches, Mr. Bewkes began thinking of Mr. Falco for a senior role within Time Warner. From Mr. Falco’s perspective, it had become clear that his immediate boss, Jeff Zucker, was the internal candidate most likely to succeed Mr. Wright, whose retirement loomed. Mr. Falco reasoned that at age 52, if he aspired to be chief executive, it would be easier for him to move to another company before Mr. Wright retired. Mr. Bewkes, meanwhile, had been developing AOL’s strategy shift with Jonathan F. Miller, the chief executive, but the men did not see eye to eye. Among Mr. Bewkes’s concerns, he said, was that the company needed a strong operating executive to make the strategy work. With that in mind, he even recommended that Mr. Miller have a drink with Mr. Falco in November, and they did. Mr. Falco was not interested in anything but a chief executive’s position — otherwise he would have happily stayed at NBC Universal — but he was surprised when Mr. Bewkes offered him the job of running AOL. With digital distribution and the Internet the current obsession of all media executives, Mr. Falco did not see his lack of direct management of a Web business as an impediment.