Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Time Warner’s $4.2 Billion AOL Fire Sale
Google marked down AOL’s value from $20 billion to $5.5 billion earlier this year. That’s still too high, argues a JP Morgan analyst.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Time Warner Dumping Its Magazines? Not So Fast.
Heavyweight media investor Gordy Crawford–who happens to own a big chunk of Time Warner–says the conglomerate plans to dump its magazine business. But I get the sense that Jeff Bewkes and company plan on keeping at least some of the unit’s iconic titles.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Former Time Warner Boss Dick Parsons Gets Back in the Media Business
There are very good odds that there are going to be some very big deals happening in the media world in the next year or so. So this move makes a lot of sense: Former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons is joining up with Providence Equity Partners, the private equity firm with a hankering for media investments.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Time Inc. Pines for a Kindle Killer–If Someone Else Builds It
Is Time Inc. building a Kindle Killer? Nope.
A report suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.
That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp., are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Rolling Stone’s Web Failure Wasn’t So Shabby, After All. But Now What?
Conventional wisdom of the day: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner, the man who made his mark with Rolling Stone in the 60s and 70s, and then again with US Weekly in this decade, has blown it on the Web. And now it’s too late for him to catch up.
And who knows? It may even be true. But here’s one bit of nuance to chew on: Magazine mogul Jann Wenner has made money–as in, a profit–on the Web for the last five years.
Friday, July 24, 2009
BusinessWeek Explains Why BusinessWeek Is for Sale: It’s a Money Pit
Earlier this year, a top BusinessWeek editor assured me that McGraw-Hill wouldn’t part with the publication–because even if it was losing money it was still a trophy asset for the publisher. But perhaps my source didn’t comprehend how much money his employer was actually losing.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore: Let’s Put the Digital “Genie Back in the Bottle” [UPDATED]
Poor John Squires. The Time Inc. SVP seems like an affable fellow. So what has he done to deserve this impossible task–figuring out a digital strategy for Time Warner’s publishing unit? Or, to put it in Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore’s words, figuring out “how to put the genie back in the bottle”?
Monday, June 8, 2009
Time Warner Sales Boss Partilla Heads For Clear Channel
John Partilla, who oversaw “cross-platform sales” at Time Warner (TWX), is leaving the media conglomerate to take a similar post at radio and billboard giant Clear Channel. Partilla has been at Time Warner since 2004; prior to that, he’d worked for various ad agencies and had founded WPP’s Brand Buzz unit.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Time Warner’s Next Spin-Off: Time Inc?
Time Warner has yet to dispose of AOL, but there’s lots of sotto voce chatter about CEO Jeff Bewkes’ next move. Last month, I reported that people familiar with Bewkes’ thinking believe he’s planning on selling off the company’s namesake Time Inc. publishing unit in 2010.
Today, Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield picks up the torch.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Yet More Cost-Cutting Coming to Forbes?
My former co-workers at Forbes are convinced that another round of cuts–it would be the third since November–is coming to the publisher. This won’t assuage their fears: High-profile investor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners is stepping down from Forbes board and giving his seat to a member of his company’s “cost-cutting team.”
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Will Time Inc. Have to Cut Again?
Time Warner’s AOL can spin positive news out of the miserable results it offered up today. But Ann Moore, who runs Time Warner’s Time Inc. publishing business, will have a tougher time selling that story to investors and Time Warner executives. Will she need to make a second round of cuts?
AOL’s Disappearing Ad Revenue: Down 20 Percent
Anyone want to buy an Internet company with plummeting ad sales? That’s Time Warner’s AOL, at least for now: Tim Armstrong’s new company saw ad sales drop by 20 percent in the last quarter, following a quarter in which they plummeted 18 percent. The good news: Things can’t get a lot worse.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Condé Nast Shuttering Portfolio
Condé Nast is shuttering its troubled Portfolio title and accompanying Web site. The publisher informed its staff of the decision at a meeting this morning. “The company is deeply grateful to Portfolio’s readers and for the broad support of marketers and executives all around the country,” says publisher David Carey.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
A Miserable Three Months for the Magazine Business: Sales Down 20 Percent (At Least)
If you talked to any remotely candid publisher about magazine performance during the first three months of this year, the response would be a glower and an epithet. Here’s what that translates to in numbers: Ad revenue was down 20.2 percent, and ad pages were down 25.9 percent. But that probably understates how bad it was.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Forbes Starts a Second Round of Layoffs; Who Else Will Join It?
Forbes Media has begun a new round of layoffs and will let go of more than 50 people on its editorial and business teams, I’m told. The cuts are roughly proportional to the ones the business publication made in November and January when it consolidated its Web and magazine operations.
The question for the rest of the industry: How many other publishers will have to make a second round of cuts themselves?
Featured MediaMemo Posts
Latest MediaMemo Videos
api-video/find_all_videos.asp&fields=all&site=atd&count=40&doctype=128&type=allthingsd-section&query=MediaMemo
View All Jobs | Post a Job Job Listings
A sponsored service from SimplyHired
MediaMemo Posts by Date
MediaMemo Posts by Category
About Peter
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
