Time Staffers Miffed at Old Lang's Sign-Off & Payout

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A 15-month job tenure yields a $19 million payout over four years. Nice work if you can get it.

Staffers at Time, Inc., however, are not happy that Laura Lang, hired in 2012 as CEO of the company for a four-year term, but who announced her intended departure in March 2013, is netting a sweet payout, according to a column in today's New York Post.

The Post piece reports that Lang, who oversaw layoffs of 500 employees and a salary freeze (see "TUOL" posts 1/11/13 & 1/31/13), received a $1 million salary in 2012--her one full year on the job--and close to $1 million for her brief stay this year.  With stock value and bonus, her 2012 earnings reached $7.6 million. Additionally, the Post reported she received a $2.5 million separation bonus this year, and is expected to reap a $2.3 million "transaction bonus" next year over the splitting off of Time, Inc. from Time Warner, which mostly was overseen by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.

Lang announced in March she would step down as soon as a replacement was found, which was in August, though her contract carried through last month. Meanwhile, according to the Post, Time, Inc. managers lost their stock option grants with the Time Warner spinoffs.

Well, at least some people are finding magazine journalism profitable nowadays.

Time Warning: Q1 Results Show It's Expensive to Pink-Slip Workforce

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An 11 percent drop in subscription revenue and an overall 5 percent decline in Q1 earnings to $737 million compared to First Quarter 2012 figures was a one-two punch of bad news for media giant Time Warner, All Things Digital (allthingsd.com) reported this week.

Time, Inc. sustained a $9 million loss for the quarter, owing to the $53 million expended to slash its 8,000-member workforce by 6 percent (see "TUOL" post 3/7/13). Time Warner, which owns nearly a quarter of the nation's magazines, plans to jettison its Time, Inc. magazine division into a separate company and shift its emphasis to its cable tv and film divisions.

Bloomberg News Plays Matchmaker; Wonders if CBS & Time Warner Will Hook-Up

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It's spring and romance is in the air, which has Bloomberg News all atwitter in an article contemplating a union between thriving media giants Time Warner and CBS.

Time Warner may still be on the rebound from its painful 2009 break-up with AOL, with which it exchanged vows in 2001 to the tune of $124 billion. Both Time Warner and CBS already have dipped their toes in relationship waters as partners in the CW Network.

Bloomberg News reported that both merger candidates are attractive New Yorkers, with CBS presently the broadcast television ratings champ and Time Warner, owner of cable outlets CNN and TNT along with one of Hollywood's busiest movie studios. Whether the match made in broadcast heaven occurs depends largely on the whims of 89-year-old mogul Sumner Redstone, who holds more than three-quarters of CBS's voting rights.

The Bloomberg article speculates that CBS could come with a $35 billion price tag, not including the cost of catering,a band and the honeymoon. Neither of the would-be lovebirds commented for the story.

Spring Cleaning: Time Warner Tossing Magazines into Separate Unit

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Following a break-off in talks with the Meredith Corp., Time Warner will concentrate on its film and cable tv units and separate its financially beleaguered Time, Inc. magazine unit into a separate entity, the New York Times reported this week.

Reportedly, talks between the two media conglomerates concerning creation of a company that would have combined many of Time, Inc.'s stable of 23 magazines with Meredith's periodicals collapsed because the two sides couldn't agree on the fate of Time, Inc.'s London-based IPC Media and over Meredith's lukewarm interest in Time's flagship magazines, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Time and Money, according to the Times article.

Arithmetic is the motivation for the Time Warner decision, as in the Fourth Quarter of 2012, Time, Inc. suffered a 7 percent loss in revenue to $967 million, while over the same period, Time Warner's cable holdings gained 5 percent in revenue to $3.67 billion. Time, Inc., the nation's largest magazine publisher, said last month it would pare its 8,000-member workforce by 6 percent (see "TUOL" post 1/31/13).

Declining advertising revenues and shrinking circulation have plagued the magazine industry overall, as this ever-modest blog first reported rumblings by Time Warner about disgorging its red-ink pumping magazine units four years ago (see "TUOL" post 9/28/09).

Sinking Ratings, Programming Woes Plague CNN

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Time Warner-owned CNN last month drew an average 357,000 viewers, the cable news network's  lowest average monthly figure since 2001, the New York Times reports.

Despite a programming shake-up that saw Soledad O'Brien installed as morning host, Erin Burnett handed a 7 p.m. slot and Piers Morgan imported from across the pond to take over Larry King's 9 p.m. slot, the 32-year-old CNN has lost out to cable news channel rival MSNBC 22 of the last 24 months in the ratings battle for second place behind ratings leader Fox News, according to the Times article.

CNN is expected to return a $600 million operating profit to Time Warner this year, but has over the past half year, trimmed its staff by 70 positions, including videographers, editors and a good chunk of its documentary unit.

The Times article cites an unnamed CNN staffer who likened the station to a hospital ER in that viewers are drawn to the network when a natural or man-made disaster occurs, just as individuals race to an emergency room when experiencing a heart attack, but that in both instances, people don't linger in either place. If CNN's ratings swoon continues, however, the morgue may be a more appropriate analogy than an emergency room.

Mashable in CNN's Sites?

Image via WikipediaWolf Blitzer, who loves holograms and other high tech toys at his disposal as he anchors CNN's political primary coverage, must be giddy at the Reuters-reported rumor that the Time Warner-owned cable network may dole out more than $200 million to acquire social media news aggregator Mashable.

Founded in Scotland by Pete Cashmore in July 2005, Mashable covers digital culture, technology and social media and purports to attract 50 million page views monthly. CNN, which the Reuters article notes acquired the iPad news application Zite last August, is eager to boost its social media presence.

Neither company would confirm the possible acquisition.

Time Warner Eying Periodical Divestiture in U.K.

Image via WikipediaA shake-up by Time Warner of its IPC Media holdings may be in the offing, reports The Telegraph, which may include the sale of  groups of magazines or individual titles.

Time Warner paid venture capitalist Cinvin $1.7 billion in 2001 to acquire IPC, the U.K.'s largest magazine group. (See "TUOL" post 8/23/10.) In a restructuring last April, IPC was reduced to three divisions from five.  Among the Time Warner-owned periodicals are Horse & Hound and fashion magazine Marie Claire.

Time Warner Ditching UK Periodicals?

Image via WikipediaThe New York Post reports that Ipc Media, Great Britain's largest magazine group, is undergoing a strategic review by parent Time Warner that will lead to the jettisoning of some niche titles and the possible unloading of the entire magazine division.

Time Warner acquired Ipc Media  in 2001 for $1.7 billion from venture capitalist Cinven. Reportedly, niche periodicals Railway, Guitar & Bass and Web User are already slated to be sold and Loaded may be unloaded to Vitality Publishing.

Industry observers say it's not outside the realm of possibility that Time Warner will get out entirely from under the financial strain of owning the magazine group. Ipc titles include Horse & Hound, Now, Chat, Look, and Nuts.

DC Comics Goes After Kryptonite Attorney in Superman Suit

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DC Comics, which is owned by Time Warner's Warner Bros. division, wants damages from Marc Toberoff, the attorney representing the heirs of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in a copyright suit against the media giant (see "TUOL" post 8/17/09).

In a 56-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the media company seeks declaratory relief concerning alleged copyright termination and assignment issues, and accuses the attorney of interfering with the economic advantage of his clients' agreements with the comic book publisher (DC Comics v. Pacific Pictures Corp., IP Worldwide LLC, IPW LLC, Marc Toberoff et al.).

According to the plaintiff's suit, the Man of Steel's creators never challenged DC Comics' copyrights and their families abided by lifetime compensation agreements entered into with the media company until Attorney Toberoff came onto the scene like Lex Luthor threatening Metropolis (that part's not in the complaint). The plaintiff claims Toberoff persuaded Siegel and Shuster's descendants to repudiate the compensation agreement that resulted in the lawsuit Joanne Siegel & Laura Siegel Larson v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. et al (Case No. 04-8400). DC Comics accuses Toberoff of violating U.S. Copyright laws and  exploiting the Superman franchise to the media giant's detriment.

As Jimmy Olsen might say: "Jeepers!"