Who

Bewkes became the CEO of Time Warner in January of 2008.

Backstory

Jeff Bewkes says he planned to be a television reporter when he graduated from Yale, and one of his first jobs was at NBC, where he worked as a researcher. He had the looks for the job, but obviously not the patience. After deciding he wanted to make a better living, the Darien native headed off to Stanford Business School and worked briefly at Citibank, before landing at HBO as a junior finance exec in 1979. Bewkes worked his way up the ranks and was elevated to CEO a decade and a half later, following the ouster of his mentor Michael J. Fuchs. Beginning in 1995, the newly-minted chief—along with his head programming whiz (and eventual successor) Chris Albrecht—focused the network on developing original programming, a decision responsible for unleashing a torrent of hits including Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Bewkes's path to the top of the media behemoth emerged shortly after the merger of Time Warner and AOL in 2000. When it became clear that the deal, cut at the height of the dotcom frenzy, had been a disastrous move for the company—and after a handful of senior AOL execs (including Steve Case and Bob Pittman) were tossed overboard—Bewkes was well-positioned to move up into a senior leadership position. In 2002, the company's newly-appointed chief, Dick Parsons, tapped Bewkes to oversee Time Warner's collection of entertainment properties. Three years later, he named him president and chief operating officer, clearly signaling Bewkes's position as heir apparent. Sure enough, when Parsons announced his retirement in November 2007, the board of directors picked Bewkes to replace him.

Of note

Bewkes (it's pronounced BYU-kiss) now heads up a company so vast—it has close to 100,000 employees and revenues of $44 billion—that no matter what's going right, something else has got to be going wrong. In recent years, he's worked alongside Parsons to shore up the bottom line by selling off money-losing businesses like Time Warner's music subsidiary (it was sold to Edgar Bronfman Jr. for $2.6 billion) and the company's book publishing unit (it was sold for $537 million to Hachette). But the pressure has yet to dissipate and shareholders have been antsy, as evidenced by Carl Icahn's unsuccessful attempt to break the behemoth into four separate companies in 2006. With the relatively languid Parsons now chairman and the more aggressive Bewkes in the driver's seat, bigger changes seem to be in store. In early 2008, he folded Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne's New Line division into Warner Bros., a move that resulted in nearly 500 job cuts, and then carried out the long-expected spin-off of TW's cable unit, Time Warner Cable. But there's been a good deal of chatter about more significant shifts, such as the sale of its declining publishing division, Time Inc., or the spin-off AOL.

By the numbers

Bewkes earned $14.9 million in 2006. He did even better in 2007, raking in $19.5 million.

On the job

From the CEO suite on the 11th floor of the Time Warner Center (his office has an outdoor terrace), Bewkes's senior team includes John Martin, the company's CFO; general counsel Paul Cappuccio; Pat Fili-Krushel, the head of HR and administration; and corporate communications chief Ed Adler. Top divisional execs include Randy Falco of AOL; Barry Meyer and Alan Horn at Warner Bros; Ann Moore and John Huey at Time Inc.; Turner Broadcasting's Philip Kent; and Time Warner Cable's Glenn Britt. One person Bewkes no longer works with: longtime pal Chris Albrecht, whom he fired in May 2007 after Albrecht was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend in Las Vegas. Following the brouhaha, Bewkes installed Bill Nelson as the new CEO of the network.

Board game

Bewkes sits on board of Yale, along with Roland Betts, Indra Nooyi, and Fareed Zakaria. He's also on the board of the American Museum of Natural History, The Creative Coalition, and the Museum of Television and Radio.

Personal

Bewkes is married to his second wife, Peggy Brim Bewkes, a former aide to ABC News president Roone Arledge. Between the two of them, they have three kids. They divide their time between a house in Greenwich and an apartment on Park Avenue in the 80s.

Soundbite

"When I was very young, I told my parents that I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. That's when they sat me down and broke it to me that we were not Jewish."