uth, the company's very longevity-are far less important. While AT&T's customer base was simultaneously aging and shrinking, most people in the United States had used the company's services at one time or another. Even if they had given their long- distance business to another company, the service they had received from AT&T was the standard to which they compared their new pro- vider. People had an unusually personal relationship with the com- pany. One of the pollsters we hired to study investor attitudes toward AT&T was struck by the fact that even people who owned relatively large amounts of AT&T stock first wanted to know how various re- structuring scenarios would affect their service, not their investment. Work on Project Pegasus continued through the spring and sum- mer, but by the fall other problems had pushed it onto a back burner. By the time the company announced its historic restructuring in Octo- ber of 2000, it had decided to simply establish a tracking stock for the consumer business, and even that notion was later abandoned. It would be July of 2004 before AT&T would throw in the towel and stop marketing standalone long distance service to consumers. The "voice overhang," as it turned out, did not cast the only, or even the biggest, shadow across AT&T. Stay Off the Treadmill of Expectations Conspiracy theories, like mushrooms, won't grow in full sunlight. If you communicate with openness and candor, the media will give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, the media have an insatiable appetite for the novel and the unexpected. Feed it, and you will soon find them chewing on your arm. Low- ering expectations will not guarantee success, but overpromising is the surest path to failure. AOL Time Warner Early on the morning of Monday, January IO, 2000, America Online and Time Warner announced the largest merger in corporate history to that date. Time Warner owned the second largest cable television system in the United States, ran the largest portfolio of magazines, produced creative produ