It wasn’t just Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer meeting in New York last week.

According to several sources close to the situation, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes rounded out the trio of chit-chatting execs, presumably gathered to discuss possible partnerships and other deals between and amongst the companies whose digital assets are among the largest on the Web.

Although the possibilities are numerous, exactly what Bostock, Ballmer and Bewkes–let’s call them the Busy B’s from here on out–were cooking up is unclear.

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Here’s a joke an exec at AOL recently sent me: Q: How many Yahoo and AOL dealmakers does it take to screw in a lightbulb A: None–you don’t need light if you’re never going to sign a merger agreement. Ahahahaha. Ha. Well, not really. So, seriously, what is Time Warner going to do about its AOL online unit?

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If there is a corporate merger brewing, there inevitably is always a code name for each company involved.

In the case of Yahoo’s merger talks with AOL, which are ongoing, the pair seem to be aiming for a tony image, using the names of two upscale institutions of higher education: Yale University and Amherst College.

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Time Inc., the largest magazine company in the world, is laying off hundreds and reorganizing itself drastically, due to tough economic conditions, especially in advertising, as well as the more inexorable diminishing of its business as readers move to the Web.

Time Inc. Chairman and CEO Ann Moore penned the email memo to employees tonight. She tried to tout gains in its digital business–part of the reason for the reorg is to move more of its content to Web platforms–noting 26 million people visit its Time Inc. sites monthly. Not good enough it seems.

Here’s the memo.

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One of the more interesting quarterly earnings calls to watch carefully is going to be Time Warner’s in two weeks.

Why? Well, in the digital space, it is because of its long-suffering online unit AOL and what results it will show. More importantly, though, is what AOL’s performance will mean for the attempts Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has tirelessly been making to trade it away to Yahoo.

Last quarter’s results were pretty bad for AOL, which dragged down Time Warner’s results. Will it be even worse for the third quarter or not?

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As has been copiously reported here and all over, Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in never-ending talks about a possible deal to merge their flagging Internet businesses.

Now, sources tell me, the circle of executives at both companies interfacing with each other has been widened, for purposes of due diligence.

That includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who is in New York this week–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once again with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, to see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck.

But it is just this kind of ramped-up blabbery that has many at both companies predicting that a deal will go through, sooner or later, as soon as Time Warner and Yahoo can agree on a price.

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Back in the first season of “Saturday Night Live,” one running catchphrase uttered by Chevy Chase would always crack the then-12-year-old BoomTown right up: “This breaking news just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”

It’s that same kind of extreme déjà vu I feel with the continuing drip-drip-drip of the news-less news that Time Warner’s AOL and Yahoo are still talking about a merger.

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While it was somewhat breathlessly reported that the Yahoo board had “authorized” a plan to talk to AOL about a possible merger yesterday, it’s just a rubber stamp of what has already been going on (and was reported here Monday).

In other words, you don’t need a leak by new board member Carl Icahn to point out the obvious and give it the official nod of approval.

Because neither Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang nor Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes actually has a lot of options.

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Unless there is an 11th-hour change of heart from Time Warner, former AOL head Jon Miller will still not be Carl Icahn’s choice for the two other seats he will select–which requires Yahoo’s consent–to the board of the Internet company, set to be announced by Friday.

Instead, several sources with knowledge of the situation think Icahn is likely to choose Edward Meyer (pictured here) and Frank Biondi, both of whom were on his alternative board slate when the activist investor was waging his now-defunct proxy fight against Yahoo.

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How much is AOL really worth?

Well, its own owner, Time Warner, has been trying to put a big, shiny $10 billion price tag on the much-beleaguered online unit for months now, as it dribbles out tiny leaks about its hot-and-cold-running acquisition talks with both Yahoo and Microsoft.

But after yesterday’s less-than-impressive results for AOL, which dragged down the crowing Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes could deservedly do over its “Dark Knight” and “Sex and the City” film successes, can it even hope to get that much?

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Oh, there had to be much, much gnashing of teeth in the corporate offices at the Time Warner Center in New York yesterday with news of the sale of DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million.

Why?

Maybe because that tasty payment is going right into the hands of Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group Ventures, which bought the fashion and shopping newsletter business for $3 million in 2003.

This is certainly different from the situation almost exactly six years ago when Pittman–nicknamed “Pitchman” for his smooth business stylings–was driven out of then-AOL Time Warner on the proverbial rail.

If you want a taste of those once-grim times for Pittman, here is an excerpt from my book, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future.”

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Yesterday, in what feels to BoomTown to be a deeply petty move, Time Warner said that it had blocked former AOL head Jon Miller from being considered as a possible Yahoo board member.

The reason is a noncompete Miller signed, part of a severance agreement he reached with the media giant after it unceremoniously tossed him out in late 2006.

A Time Warner spokesman said Miller was barred from working “for a variety of competitors, including Yahoo, until March of 2009.”

Like it matters.

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After its annual meeting today, as Yahoo board members had lunch together, Yahoo released the unsurprising results of its shareholder vote and it seems we will still have Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to kick around some more.

Yang garnered 85.4 percent of the shares to stay on as a director of the Internet company, with 18.2 percent withheld.

While having almost 20 percent of your investors think you are not worthy is not good, it is also not nearly as bad as it could have been.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview I did with Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes.

As you will see, Bewkes is a live wire, sassing me about the hard time I was giving him about the rough road AOL has had as a Time Warner property.

In this video, Bewkes takes questions from the audience about CNN, Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, Bebo, content, the greening of Time Warner and he also gets in a stats tussle with Yahoo’s media head Scott Moore.

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We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Here’s Part 3 of 4 of an interview I did with Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes.

As you will see, Bewkes is a live wire, sassing me about the hard time I was giving him about the rough road AOL has had as a Time Warner property.

In this video, Bewkes talks about the digitization of its HBO premium cable channel and also its television and movie businesses and the challenges of making of original content online.

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