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2003:05:15:21:29:20 BUSINESS C11 LOSANGELESTIMES MOREONSUNDAY 2003 For home delivery, call 1-800-LA TIMES. 03ED0144.6.03 Los Angeles Times Magazine How does your garden grow? Our Special Garden Issue is here tohelp cultivate your Southern California garden. From water to wild things, our staff digs deep and takes a look at the region's abundant and diverse indigenous plants, drought-tolerant bedfellows and gardens that will make your thumb green with envy. An invaluable resource for your botanical side. Adisciplined, well-ordered personality, he has just enough flair to prosper in a sometimes unruly business.

He may well represent the new the kind of person more likely to run media corporations of the future than such Hollywood-bred players as Walt Disney Michael Eisner or moguls such as Viacom Sumner Redstone. a good model for the modern-day manager in said Tom Freston, MTV Networks chief. The tall, graying and whip- thin Bewkes, who turns 51 this month, is barely known to a public that has savored programs including and and the born during his seven years as chief executive. But his promotion in July made him one of the entertainment most powerful figures, with a portfolio that includes such properties as Warner New Line Cinema, Warner Music Group and CNN. Bewkes declined to be interviewed.

Associates said that was because of the delicacy of his position as AOL tries to shake off the rough internal politics of its recent past while confronting problems that include a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of possible accounting irregularities at the online unit, which Bewkes oversee. Bewkes can be blunt-spoken almost to the point of self- destruction, as when he is said to have advised then-boss Gerald Levin to scrap Time Warner still-unconsummated merger with America Online Inc. more than two years ago. Still, Bewkes uses humor to take the edge off confrontations and awkward situations. As one story goes, when he was caught with dog droppings on his shoe ata job interview at business school, he said simply: guess it for my investment banking Cautious Steps While rarely showing his ambitions, Bewkes has tended his career with care and perhaps excess caution.

Asked to run cable empire or, by some accounts, to consider heading Warner he instead chose the known path and relatively assured profits of HBO, which he joined in 1979. He also passed on achance to head fast-growing America Online before the merger, a job that went to Bob Pittman. Bewkes wandered into show business as a kind of accidental tourist on holiday from a charmed life. At 20, he worked briefly as TV producer Leonard gofer, in a job that involved chauffeuring Diana Rigg of Stern said Bewkes landed the position thanks to his businessman father, Eugene Garrett Bewkes who owned astake in company. The elder Bewkes was a top executive with Norton Simon Inc.

in the 1970s and later chairman of American Bakeries Co. His father, Eugene Garrett Bewkes was aprofessor of philosophy at Colgate University and later headed St. Lawrence University. Like his older brother, investment banker Eugene Garrett Bewkes III, Jeff Bewkes attended Deerfield Academy; he then moved on to Yale. were media maven Steve Brill, who was at Deerfield and Yale two years ahead of Jeff, said of the family.

At Yale, Bewkes was rebel enough to take a film class, in which he claimed to put classmates to sleep with a documentary on a slaughterhouse. But he cut his long hair and entered Stanford in 1975, where the business program, overseen by Ford Motor Co. Arjay Miller, was heavy on group values and analytical rigor. oozed cool, the way Danny Zuko in said classmate Gene now head of KPMG. Peter Kreisky, a classmate and friend, said Bewkes had a ability to engage people and a sense of birthright.

was very clear about the leverage that Stanford business school would give him in attaining the kind of position that his father said Kreisky, a media analyst with New York-based Kreisky Media Consultancy. Out of school, Bewkes landed at the Sonoma Vineyard winery, whose chief had worked with his father at Norton Simon. After ayear, Bewkes moved to Citi- bank, where he became involved with shipping lending. Then he pushed on to HBO, then an obscure side venture owned by magazine giant Time Inc. Some soon saw the golden boy as the parent fu- ture CEO.

saw him running the whole thing in said Curt Viebranz, a cohort who later ran international operations. Two decades later, associates freely speculate as to whether Bewkes will eventually run the media behemoth created by the subsequent combinations of Time with Warner Communications, Turner Broadcasting System and America Online. Asked whether Bewkes was likely to head the company, or one just as large, Warner Music Group Chairman Roger Ames said: I think definitely, in my mind, got the perfect skill set to run a large media entertainment On taking over HBO, where he rose as a finance officer, Bewkes beguiled skeptics on the creative side. a hybrid. He uses both sides of his said and the star Sarah Jessica Parker, who marked latest promotion by purchasing AOL stock.

fans talk less of achievements than what they describe as remarkable personal qualities that only enhanced his aura as AOL Time Warner slid into its post-merger turmoil. Fiercely independent, he became the voice of dissent when America types many now departed lectured Time managers on matters as microscopic as the way Warner Bros. handled author relations. Subtly encouraged by Parsons, Bewkes stood on profit record and used of the media unit chiefs to push back against newcomers as powerful as then-AOL Chairman Steve Case and Co-Chief Operating Officer Bob Pittman. Others tell of touch with subordinates.

is a business where everybody claims they did it. He makes you think you did said Sheila Nevins, who supervises documentaries. loyalty to Bewkes was cemented when a would-be rival once made a pitch for her job. When Bewkes understood the purpose of the meeting, he called Nevins to sit in. To William Morris Agency President Jim Wiatt, Bewkes is arare who lacks destructive ego.

Knowing that Wiatt suffers elevator anxiety and easily climb 29 flights to AOL office, the executive recently made a pilgrimage to the New York suite and strolled down with him from William 18th floor. Facing New Adversity Still, some are waiting to see whether Bewkes can stand up to problems bigger than any he faced at HBO, where he was long sheltered from the rough and tumble by his talented though volatile bossMi- chael Fuchs. Sometimes frustrated by equanimity, Fuchs was known to remind him in negotiations: an advocate. Not a Despite tough decisions later as CEO, Bewkes enjoyed growth that was built on a philosophy largely in place and was helped by the explosion of satellite services such as DirecTV and EchoStar been said one competitor. has never known adversity in the businesses been responsible Admirers challenge that view.

They say expansion to about 27 million subscribers a given but depended on willingness to take risks for instance, tripling investment in original programs post-Fuchs and confronting the big networks with own series. Profit margins soared from yearly to between and during his tenure. On a personal level, associates say one of biggest trials was a divorce from his first wife, a trust attorney. Bewkes later married Margaret Brim, whom he knew at Yale, and has a son by each marriage. And political culture has tried the mettle, some say.

At HBO farewell, friends gave him a Sharper Image air purifier, an allusion to his slight germophobia and to the toxic corporate atmosphere. they said. The purifier stands by his desk. According to one intimate, Levin, the now-retired AOL Time Warner CEO, never forgave Bewkes for sidestepping the challenge of running Warner Bros. when the long- time chiefsBob Daly and Terry Semelleft in 1999.

(Others dispute whether Bewkes was ever offered the Warner post.) Levin, who bypassed Bewkes when he was looking for his own successor, be reached. Perhaps because of his front- row seat during the merger turmoil, Bewkes shows no patience for those who violate his sense of order. The effect in at least two cases, associates say, has been to undercut productive managers who seemed to mimic own directness but also were seen as overstepping their bounds. After Bewkes took charge in July, Warner Production Chief Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who helped secure billions of dollars by fostering such franchises as and clashed with Warner President Alan Horn. In New York for alate-summer film premiere, Di Bonaventura called on Bewkes.

On returning to Los Angeles, he was pushed out of the company, with assent, by Horn and Warner Chairman Barry Meyer.Di Bonaventura, now a producer, declined to comment on his departure, as did Meyer. Afew months later, Meyer fired Warren Lieberfarb, the leg- endaryanddifficultWarner home video chief who boosted profits across the industry by pioneering the DVD and using it to make movies a retail commodity. Lieberfarb had pressed to reorganize the studio to unify strategy for theatrical, video, DVD and pay-per-view releases. In the resulting friction, he was ousted, while Bewkes largely stood aside. Lieberfarb and Meyer declined to comment.

The new entertainment chairman has loosened the reins on division heads while focusing on strategy for instance, by developing a still-unfolding to guide his businesses past piracy to an electronic future. As to competition with Fox eroding music sales or questions about his next act after and Lord of the has left those issues to operating chiefs who describe themselves more as colleagues than underlings. Nevins, the HBO programmer, finds that consistent with the Bewkes she admires. acknowledges she explained. But she added: know if that helps a guy win Bewkes Seen as the New Bewkes, from Page C1 HBO take himself and obstacles that John Billock, second in command atAOL Time cable unit, on his friend and colleague Jeff Bewkes, above.