The skinny: AOL is in a bad bind. To maintain market share, it had to offer the same low flat rate as its Internet competitors. But CEO Steve Case somehow didn’t get that if you switch to all-you-can-eat, people tend to eat a lot more. Now the company’s 8 million customers can’t count on a connection, and they’re angry. Who can blame them–they’re paying for busy signals! Worse, even the $350 million AOL is spending to buy equipment may not help, because demand will only increase: the new wave in computing is to be connected all the time. Pity Bob Pittman, the guy who invented MTV. He signed up as AOL’s programming czar, claiming the company’s future was in devising great interactive content: entertainment, news and chat forums. These days he has to focus on installing modems–and salvaging a PR disaster. AOL’s accommodation to the age of the Internet was always going to be tricky, but if everyone keeps thinking of the company as ““America Offline,’’ the onetime highflier might find itself faced with a meltdown.
