This past November, when outgoing Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons was appearing before investors and was asked regarding his replacement Jeff Bewkes, "If you were Jeff, coming in--" he interrupted the questioner.

"If I were Jeff," he said, "I would shoot myself."

Back then, Bewkes himself, mindful of the pressure from investors and the analysts who grill execs on their behalf as Time Warner's stock price continued to lay becalmed, said the company needed to take stern measures, and needed to do it soon.

Yesterday's 4th Quarter (and full 2007) Earnings conference call began in that spirit, with Bewkes front and center on the speaker phone promising analysts, "A straightforward, ongoing dialog with you." That's typical enough for a CEO in his position, but he atypically launched into a fairly lengthy peroration showing his determination to "manage our balance sheet and deploy capital to the right places...better managing our costs."

If any TW executives' ears were burning, it was those of New Line Cinema's Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, whose performance as a studio specializing in the genre pictures that big Warner's doesn't have time for has been lackluster for some time. Even their key franchise success, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was undercut by a lengthy feud over payouts to filmmaker Peter Jackson--who did, however, recently reach a agreement over both his share of the proceeds and two forthcoming pictures based on The Hobbit.

As Bewkes knew, and the analysts soon realized, they were not to be given the kind of red meat they've been agitating for--quick divestiture of the either the schizophrenic AOL arm (which he wil, he said,split nto access and audience componnts-- or the costly cable division. This moved the focus on the relatively less cost-intensive New Line.

Bewkes wasted no time announcing some cuts in corporate overhead--"to set the right tone"--and an unspecified plan to rationalize New Line: "There's an obvious question about whether it still makes sense for us to have two completely separate studio infrastructures at Warner Bros. and New Line, so we're reviewing how to operate New Line more efficiently and we expect to take action fairly soon."

A report by the Shaye-hating Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily proffered that Bewkes had already sought to take measures in a meeting with Shaye and Lynne, and that "the twosome pushed back and told Bewkes they would put together a plan for reorganization that would save the company a lot of money in exchange for a contract extension that leaves them as co-heads of the studio. But Bewkes isn't interested in that scenario."

One suggested solution is that someone like the newly liberated ex-Yahoo chief Terry Semel would put together a deal to acquire the studio. Still, whether to buff it up for sale or explain why he'd keep it around, Bewkes made mention of New Line's "real value as an independent label and a brand" that's had "great success in certain genres of films."

But little reassurance was offered the two execs. When Pali Capital's Richard Greenfield, who given Parsons and the TW stock a righteous slagging some months before, asked Bewkes and CFO John Martin first able buying up the rest of the cable company (they now control 84 percent) while it may be a bargain with a price that's slid from 42 to 24, they demurred from revealing a strategy, and when Greenfield asked if there were "contractural issues with Shaye and Lynne in terms of ownership", Bewkes quickly noted, "On the New Line side it's very clear there are not any ownership positions--Time Warner owns New Line one hundred percent and we have the same relationship with Bob and Michael we have with al our other executives."

From the man who supervised The Sopranos when he was running HBO, that sounded a lot like the sort of nautical outing that precedes a hit before too much screen time has elapsed--and Bewkes is definitely on Wall Street's screen. As Greenfield told the New York Times afterward, "I just think it is increasingly hard or see any of these [TW] businesses as leaders in their categories, and we don't see the kind of story or vision at New Line that we see at News Corporation or Viacom...so there is no compelling reason to own the stock."

(Jeff Bewkes and New Line co-chairman Bob Shaye in 2004; photo by Getty Images)