• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, May 1, 2013

That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so they say, and there’s probably no better proof of that than Aol, formerly AOL, formerly America Online, which should have been dead long ago, and almost was. The AOL/Time Warner merger, just 13 years ago, was a disaster almost from the get-go, but out of it was built a company that unblinkingly, as they say, leans forward. (Even if officially it still is the same old all-cap AOL.) 

That Aol lives to have had an overly long NewFronts presentation Tuesday in New York is a result of what CEO Tim Armstrong told the overflow crowd. When it was between fight or flight, “We always choose fight.”  Ran Harnevo, Aol’s senior vice president and head of video asked a few moments later, what’s the difference between online and TV. The answer? Nothing. “We feel this industry has a moment in time.“

There’s a lot of that talk going on at the NewFronts this week, not least of all at Aol. It trotted out a passel of stars and program highlights ranging from “Huff Post Live” (now a year old) and Ariana Huffington to NFL star Ray Rice who will be a featured body on “ My Ink,” a project chronicling the allegedly fascinating stories behind the tattoos famous athletes put all over their bodies.

In a way, “My Ink” captures the perfect essence of a kind of Aol’s narcissistic approach to its presentation, if not it’s its overall programming philosophy. Aol’s stars seemed to be very much in love with themselves, hardly all of it in the very most embarrassing way—blithely unaware.  

Jonathan Adler, artist and star of Aol's “Inspiration Point” arrived on stage, self-baffled by his own fabulousness. “Am I a potter? Am I a textilist?” He settled for, “I am a maker. I make things. If I didn’t make things, I’d go insane.” Apparently Aol is going the aspirational route, heavy on the first syllable.

How is it I don’t mind so much?     

It was all very embarrassing, even if the programs/videos what-have-you turn out better, which is relatively likely, and may be uniquely measurable.  Near the end of the event, it announced its  participation in Nielsen’s experimental Digital Program Ratings that will give overnight ratings for TV programming viewed online. What’s more, Aol announced another hook-up with Nielsen, the Aol Video Reach, that will measure viewership of Aol’s library of video in demographic reach and frequency vocabulary, and otherwise, TV-like terms.  From that standpoint, the idea of Aol being very into itself seems a little bit more sensible. It can now give advertisers better information about how many millions of others are glowing the same fabulous way.  That is the game digital video is now playing, seriously.  

pj@mediapost.com