The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies. Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave. Portfolio. 320 pages.

The first word that you usually hear when seemingly disparate corporate entities unite is ``synergy,'' but the authors of this new book demonstrate that there usually isn't much of that after the fact.

Early in The Curse of the Mogul, the authors cite a full-page ad by Vivendi Chairman Jean-Marie Messier published upon that media conglomerate's acquisition of venerable publisher Houghton Mifflin. The Frenchman mused about the new opportunities that were going to emerge, including a movie featuring Curious George, the venerable kid lit character whose exploits were published by Houghton Mifflin. That Messier was blissfully unaware that such a project was already underway, and seemingly clueless, as well, about the general nature of intellectual property, served as apt foreshadowing of the disaster ahead.

But most of new media clusters were illogical amalgamations to begin with. And clumsy execution guaranteed their failure, even with the best of intentions. Inevitably, the value of the properties quickly bled out. For example, the following passage, although a bit clunky, thoroughly describes the numerous flaws of the Time Warner/AOL merger and how it all unraveled:

``Time Warner announced in May that it plans to spin off its AOL division by year end. The new AOL's value will likely be barely 1 percent of the market price of the inflated stock that Time Warner accepted in the original $175 billion merger almost a decade ago -- despite the inclusion of numerous subsequent expensive add-on acquisitions. While extreme, the Time Warner-AOL combination was no aberration. The deal represents less than half the financial damage done during an unprecedented era of excess in the media business. Since 2000, the largest media conglomerates have collectively written down more than $200 billion in assets, a record that would make even Citigroup blush. These write-downs reflect a broad-based legacy of value destruction from relentlessly overpriced acquisitions, `strategic' investments and contracts for content and talent.''

The curse alluded to in the title is that media executives can't help pursuing and acquiring other companies that may or may not be related to their core business and competencies. They speak of leveraging assets to strengthen each division, for example, but failure to understand the business of added entity and in achieving the desired economies of scale seem to be the rule and not the exception.

Sometimes, to be sure, it worked. When the three main labels that comprised Warner Music first joined forces, the obvious benefits of their distribution system paid dividends in their ability to promote new artists and sell tonnage on ``catalog'' acts, too. But they were all in the same business to begin with. That's the exception, not the rule.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was an odd suitor for then-booming networking site, MySpace, which is now an afterthought (or punch line) in the online social world ruled by Facebook and Twitter. Many similar disparate couplings are cited, too, but the abiding lesson therein can be summed up by ``he paid too much.''

The authors do an above-average job in conveying the wasteland of bad deals, ill-conceived mergers and marriages of inconvenience, but they are not the most elegant prose stylists, so the going gets rough, at times, for the reader. Overall, it's an interesting, albeit scholarly approach. If for anyone who wants to teach a course on the failures of media consolidation and conglomeration, this is your textbook.

To receive business book reviews by e-mail or join the Business Monday Book Club, e-mail Richard Pachter at rap@richardpachter.com. To read more of Pachter's musings, go to www.richardpachter.com and follow him on Twitter @rpachter.

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