Perhaps there’s some important piece I’m missing but the new home page of AoL. is just plain ugly. The choice of “themes” at the top make no sense at all, especially since choosing one over the other makes little change to the page at all. Hopefully, this isn’t an example of the changes the newly-independent company has in store for us.

Both AoL. and Time Warner executives spoke at the recent 37th annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference  [PDF] in New York. While both Aol.’s chair and CEO Tim Armstrong and TW’s chair and CEO Jeff Bewkes were somewhat skimpy on details they provided the media audience with a little taste of the firms’ futures and a short look back.

Jeff Bewkes, approaching his two-year anniversary as CEO, spent much of his helm time recreating and in some ways dismantling the company. “What we’ve been really doing is significantly focusing in programming and on the brand, putting more resources in and getter earnings power and band strength from those products,” he said. “We feel very strong about our position in the media sectors we’ve focused on. We had a very good year this year and are looking for the same next year.”

Film seems to be the Time Warner revenue hero, with earnings over $1 billion for the last eight years. “If our new Sherlock Holmes and Invictus do what we expect them to do at the box office we’ll have eight films over $100 million each this year,” he said. “We’re also the largest producer of TV series’ to the U.S. network industry, for all four networks. No network can produce everything for itself. We’re the second favorite place for them to get their series’.”

Bewkes is excited about Time Warner’s new TV On Demand initiative, saying it will make it very easy for people to continue watching their favorite shows. “As long as we move in that direction and do it fast we can make this successful,” he said. “People are watching more, advertising price per time is up, time watching is up. If you look at some of the more popular Internet versions, it’s clear people will pay for it. It has to be a fair deal, though.”

Bewkes assured shareholders that the AoL. spinoff wouldn’t negatively impact profits. “We have said that we will maintain our dividend after we spun off AOL and will increase it. We have very strong earnins that we will return this year. We have also been buying stock on a steady basis,” he said.

While not confirming an MGM purchase, Bewkes did admit Time Warner would consider that. “I think MGM is going to look for alternate capitalization, and many companies, us included, will look at that,” he said.

AoL.’s Armstrong enthused about the company he joined just this March. “I’ve nothing but respect for Google, and loved working there,” he said. “What got me to leave is that Aol. has a global brand, which is incredibly difficult to build. It has a unique set of attributes. A tough decision, when I look back I think it was the right one.”

Armstrong began his AoL. life with a 100-stop listening tour of all AoL. locations and that of its partners. He then held a July 24 global meeting for the entire management team. He asked for employee feedback and management feedback of all that the company needed to change. He had his own personal list from his travels. “We had three whiteboards, with only five points on each allowed. All turned out to be exactly the same, with one exception on my list. That was very strong recognition that there are real things that can be done. AoL. has been working on a one-page document since then – that is our strategy.”

One of the primary obstacles for AoL. was its 24 advertising systems and 17 management systems, none of which integrated with each other. Among other things, this complicated ad sales, reducing them to a total when Armstrong arrived of fewer than 1000 advertisers. He spent months overseeing the building of a new content management system, to run on Facebook, Twitter and other social products.

“We now have a multibillion dollar ad engine underneath it,” he said. “We can now partner with 10,000 organizations if we wish. We have six times the amount of video now as we did only four months ago, with 70-80 content-specific properties such as Black Voices and Stylist. We will go to hundreds over the next couple of years. Our product is 80 percent our own content. Seed.com will allow us to continue delivering mass quantities of content. There’s still a church and state between ads and news but we’re snapping them together much closer.”

If these two executives are right, the AOL/Time Warner split will turn out well for both. Now, if AoL. can just hire some more creative graphic designers.