Free Republic

March 20, 2007 Giuliani Top Choice Among Both Moderate, Conservative Republicans Gingrich, Romney do better among conservatives than moderates by Jeffrey M. Jones GALLUP NEWS SERVICEPRINCETON, NJ -- With the 2008 Republican presidential field beginning to come into shape, there are still questions and apparent opportunities for a favorite "conservative" candidate to emerge. The three leading announced contenders -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney -- have taken stances in the past that are out of step, if not unpopular, with conservative voters, although all have taken recent steps to try to reassure conservatives. The key question is...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Time Warner, the world's largest media company, is expected to post a decline in fourth-quarter profit next week on decreased revenue at AOL and difficult comparisons with a prior-year quarter that included the smash-hit movie "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Reporting results on Wednesday, Time Warner (TWX)is expected to earn 23 cents a share on revenue of $11.1 billion. A year ago, the company earned 25 cents a share on an adjusted basis, on revenue of $11.89 billion. CIBC World Markets analyst Jason Helfstein trimmed his fourth-quarter earnings forecast on Time Warner Friday, cutting the...

Nearly 7 million copies of Time magazine's annual "Person of the Year" issue are set to arrive in mailboxes and on newsstands in the next few days. The cover declares that Person to be none other than "You. Yes, you." It explains, "You control the information age. Welcome to your world." The image is of a computer with a flat screen monitor and a screen-laminate of reflective Mylar. Readers are invited to gaze Narcissus-like at their own reflection. Managing editor Richard Stengel explains the odd choice. He downloaded a video to YouTube asking for input. The responses were numerous. Within...

Former CBS chief Mel Karmazin has told reporters that he long believed - and continues to believe - that CBS and CNN should merge. Speaking at the Reuters Media Summit in New York City, Karmazin said: "I thought CBS News and CNN to this day should be combined. I was hoping that Dick [Parsons, Time Warner CEO] would buy [tri-state cable operator] Cablevision and need the cash, because Cablevision was much more strategic [to Time Warner], and then sell me CNN." "When I was [CBS] CEO, would I have liked to have owned CNN?" he asked rhetorically. "Yeah." Discussing the...

October 4, 2006 -- JUST when you thought things couldn't possibly get any more demoralizing at Time Inc., along comes news that the media giant is planning more job cuts next year. The company so far is dismissing the talk. One source said the cuts -"specifically job reductions at Time magazine" - are expected to coincide with the expiration of the current contract with the Newspaper Guild. That pact between the company and the editorial employees on the biggest New York-based magazines expires Feb. 1, 2007. The new contract, the first since an agreement went into effect in 1999, will...

COVER an industry, any industry, long enough and you will learn that the sky is always falling. Morale has never been lower, competition is beyond the pale, and the customers have lost their minds. Nowhere has the drumbeat been more persistent than in publishing. After last week, I think Chicken Little may be on to something. On Tuesday, Time Inc. announced that it was putting 18 of its 50 magazines in the United States up for sale. Given the somewhat marginal publications involved — niche magazines like Popular Science, Yachting, Transworld Skateboarding — it is not as if the company...

For most of the 20th century, under the influence of its founder, Henry R. Luce, Time magazine spoke in a single authoritative voice that reflected the world back to its readers. Now Richard Stengel, the new managing editor of Time, wants to change the metaphor. “We’ve traditionally been a mirror, and to me, we more and more have to be a lamp,” Mr. Stengel said, invoking the title of the study of Romantic literature by M. H. Abrams. “As a lamp, you’re shining a light on something.” Mr. Stengel’s plan is to fill the pages of Time with more essays...

Ever since its disastrous 2000 merger with America Online, Time Warner has been playing defense. Outside agitators like Carl Icahn have called on the media behemoth to sell or spin off units that generate cash reliably but don't offer much in the way of growth, notably AOL and the company's vast cable holdings. CEO Richard Parsons, refusing to budge from the company's conglomeration strategy, has politely demurred. But recent events suggest that Icahn and the professional noodges have focused on the wrong corporate assets. What if Time Warner sold off Time Inc., the company's mammoth magazine business? Home to such...

TIME MAGAZINE FEATURES HILLARY It is just beginning, folks. The mainstream media is going to sell foolish people on Hillary Clinton. She is in position to march into our White House. TIME MAGAZINE steps up to the plate with a Hillary story to set the stage. How many people know that Hillary's top advisor, the lovely Mandy Grunwald, is the daughter of the former TIME editor-in-chief, Henry Grunwald? How many know that her husband, Matt Cooper, works for TIME? This is incestuous and it is how the MSM is going to carry her into the White House. Wait for...

asia.news.yahoo.com Friday August 18, 4:39 AM Time Warner to Restate Earnings Time Warner Inc. said Thursday it will restate its financial results after an independent auditor found problems with the way it accounted for a number of transactions in 2000 and 2001, mainly involving online advertising. The restatement came as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over accounting problems at its America Online unit, which was announced in March of last year. The company also agreed to pay a $300 million penalty. The SEC settlement also required Time Warner to appoint an independent examiner to review...

Underperformers such as 'Poseidon' have given the studio and investors a sinking feeling. Last year Warner Bros. President Alan Horn was at the top of his game. Boy wizard Harry Potter, eccentric candy maker Willy Wonka and crime fighter Batman catapulted Warner to its most profitable year. But the hot streak ended with a thud. Not even Superman could prevent a crush of movie losses that has shaken the venerable Burbank studio and its affable leader. The costly disaster movie "Poseidon," director M. Night Shyamalan's fantasy thriller "Lady in the Water," the computer-animated "The Ant Bully" and the urban drama...

NEW YORK -- AOL said Thursday it expects to drop as many as 5,000 employees, or a quarter of its global work force, within six months as the company restructures its business to draw more online advertising dollars. The announcement came a day after the Time Warner Inc. unit said it would no longer charge high-speed Internet customers for e-mail and other services in hopes of preventing their defection to rivals like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which long have offered free, ad-supported e-mail. An unknown number of European employees will still have jobs, but with a different...

NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) AOL online division on Thursday said about 5,000, or about 26 percent of its 19,000 employees, will not be employed by the company within six months as a result of its retructuring. "At a company meeting this morning, Jon Miller (AOL CEO) told AOL's worldwide work force of 19,000 people that within six months, it was likely that around 5,000 employees would no longer be with the company," the company said in a statement. AOL, which is in the process of selling its European Internet access business,...

TIME WARNER CEO DICK PARSONS admits that Time Inc.'s second-quarter returns were poor. Speaking on an earnings conference call Wednesday morning, Parsons said: "The one disappointment in the quarter was Time Inc., whose results were once again less robust than we had expected." His words confirmed industry buzz that spiked with the company's closing of Teen People on July 25. According to Time Warner figures, Time Inc. experienced declining revenue across a number of sources on a year-over-year basis, with subscription revenue falling 5 percent from $421 million in second quarter 2005 to $398 million in 2006. Other publishing revenues...

On page 7 of 19 of the Q2 2006 news release we find this bit of information... PUBLISHING (Time Inc.) Revenues declined 2% ($29 million) to $1.3 billion, reflecting decreases in Subscription ($23 million), Other ($14 million) and Content ($6 million) revenues, offset partially by higher Advertising revenues ($14 million). The decline in Subscription revenues was related to an unfavorable impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates at IPC ($9 million) as well as decreases at Southern Living due primarily to one fewer issue in 2006. The decrease in Other revenues was due largely to lower commerce revenues at...

Time Warner Inc. swung to a $1 billion profit in the second quarter and released details Wednesday of a long-anticipated plan to offer many AOL services such as e-mail for free. Time Warner lost $409 million in the same period a year ago, when the company recorded a $3 billion charge for settling securities litigation. The loss amounted to 9 cents per share a year ago.

Disappointment remains Wall Street's watchword on Time Warner (TWX) . The media behemoth overcame a challenge by restive shareholders earlier this year and is preparing to roll out a new plan for its torpid AOL unit. But as Time Warner prepares to post second-quarter earnings Wednesday morning, its stagnant share price continues to flummox investors. The New York media company, which owns cable systems, TV networks and movie studios, along with publishing and online properties, has seen its shares fall 7% in 2006. That lags behind the big-cap S&P 500, which is up 2%, and trails hard-charging peers Disney (DIS)...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Publisher and broadcaster Tribune Co. (NYSE:TRB - News) said on Friday it sold 2.8 million shares of stock in media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX - News) for net proceeds of about $46 million. Tribune expects to record a pretax gain on the sale of about $19 million in the third quarter of 2006, it said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Tribune owns newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. It also owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team and more than two-dozen television stations.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Steve Case, co-founder of the one-time biggest online service AOL, apologized for the company's merger with media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. in an interview with U.S. journalist Charlie Rose. In an interview broadcast on Friday, Case, who was shoved aside as chairman in 2003 and who left the board entirely in 2005, said, "Yes, I'm sorry I did it," referring to the 2001 merger of Time Warner and AOL. The deal, known as one of the worst corporate mergers in history, destroyed some $200 billion in shareholder value. Last October, Case argued in a Washington Post...