Time Warner announces plans to sell off Time Inc.?

Yi-Wyn Yen — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:01:08 -0500

Time Warner warned investors that the company was taking a $25 billion write-down a month prior to reporting its Q4 2008 results. The media company blamed the "somewhat more challenging" economy (no surprise), AOL (no surprise) and its magazine business (no surprise).

Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes has been fairly vocal about wanting to sell off AOL, the Internet portal with the largest Internet ad network. JP Morgan Chase analyst Imran Khan anticipates that AOL's ad revenue for Q4 fell 18% from the same period a year ago. Yikes. AOL and Yahoo have been in talks since last year. (The Standard is currently running a prediction that Yahoo will announce an AOL acquisition by July.)

Some suspect that Time Warner may finally be ready to cast off its beleagured magazine biz, too. Time Inc., which includes Time, Fortune, People, and Sports Illustrated, has been struggling to sell ads for some time and it's gotten tougher in a rapidly deteriorating economy. Time Warner will report worse-than-expected earnings on Feb. 4.

Prediction: Will Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes publicly announce that the company is willing or has plans to sell its publishing unit Time Inc. by the end of June 2009?

Image: Trozbo/Flickr