Temple fought the merger because of his belief that current movies and TV shows are bad for kids; he even disapproved of Time Inc.’s profitable HBO unit. Temple criticized the company’s decision–upheld in the Delaware courts–not to put the merger to a shareholder vote. “It’s unbelievable that the courts would have treated the shareholders as they did,” he says. Under this precedent, “management is able to hire the top law firms with shareholder money and use them to emasculate you.”
Temple, like many critics of Time Warner, says executives have rewarded themselves too handsomely. He does not express anger at co-CEO Steve Ross, whom he says he has “never had a word with.” Ross; he says, already had “a clear reputation for taking care of himself…We knew what he was when he came to the party.” Temple criticizes Time’s management, especially co-CEO Nicholas J. Nicholas, for joining up with Ross and accepting the executive-pay jump: “the present management of Time seems to me to have no shame.”
Temple has followed the shareholder revolt over the Time Warner rights offering, which he calls “unjust and unfair…It is detrimental to the interests of the shareholders and is beneficial to management–again.” Now Time Warner has decided to take another look at its controversial rights offering, but Temple remains skeptical: “I suppose it’s reason for joy,” he says–but with uncharacteristic profanity adds, “You can bet they’ll screw the stockholders whenever and however they’ll restructure it.” Now past the 70-year mark, Temple finds little reason to leave Diboll, the small town in the piney woods of east Texas that his grandfather founded in 1894. Temple keeps an office at Exeter Investment Co., the family financial-management firm. One investment he’s all but dropped: Time Warner. “We have disposed of all but a token number of shares” (which, for a family with holdings like the Temples, might still run into hundreds of thousands of shares). “If that’s the way the game is,” Temple says, “I don’t want to play.”
