AOL Video has added Viacom's Paramount Pictures to its growing list of content that is downloadable at AOL Video. Full-length movies and TV shows from Viacom's network and from the studios of Paramount Pictures will start emerging from the AOL Video site soon.

I see this as a very nice addition to a growing online video outlet that AOL, a division of Timer Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TWX) needs to keep visible in the face of competition from Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG), YouTube, Apple Computer's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes and possibly Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Zune store soon -- and that's just the start.

AOL Video, which debuted to the world in August, includes content from Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios -- and now, Paramount Pictures.

AOL Video users can download and watch video content that ranges in price from $10 to $20, and AOL Video customers also have the option of streaming free video directly from the site in addition to downloading "to-own" video content that becomes the property of the customer once paid for and downloaded.

Time Warner Inc. (TWX) plans an IPO of its cable TV unit to follow its court-approved purchase of Adelphia Communication assets, Bloomberg is reporting [via ShanghaiDaily.com -- see also a little write-up in the L.A. Times). Time Warner Cable spokesman Mark Harrad says the company intends to hurry this offering along. It could happen as soon as July 31, but depending on the paperwork, and creditor appeal, could take as long as until the end of 2006 to appear. Time Warner would like to have their ducks in a row by the end of this month however, and then be able to coincide the initial public offering with the closing date of the Adelphia deal.

That would make a tidy little package to announce done and delivered on August 2 when Time Warner holds its Q3 earnings call.

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard Parsons blames the declining value in his company's stock (TWX) this year on "investor wariness of the media industry" while maintaining that the company "is clearly undervalued" (via Bloomberg). However, the relatively stronger performance of rivals such as Disney (DIS), tends to discredit this spin, as the Bloomberg piece also notes.

Yeah, kinda.

This while Time Warner continues to try and do damage control over report after report speculating over the possible outcomes of its rumored billion-dollar paradigm shift -- including lashing out at media for what the company claims are "erroneous reports" about the future of AOL.

Any change this large, to a business this large, was bound to break before company leaders would have wished it to. I expect the changeover from paid to free services will occur. It will certainly be anti-climatic if it doesn't, and information -- maybe the erroneous kind, especially -- that hurls toward critical mass like this story appears to, has a way of overtaking actual events. One way or another AOL is going to be a very different entity before summer is out.