Time is still a really big publishing company, with 23 percent
of the U.S. magazine business. And once it is done firing people, it may make
money again.
Overall revenue was down 5 percent, to $737 million. Subscription revenue
was down 11 percent, and the main reason advertising revenue was up 2 percent was
because Time Inc. now has control of Golf.com and Sports Illustrated’s website,
which used to be run by Time Warner’s cable networks.And the additional money Time Inc. makes from those sites is basically wiped out by the absence of licensing fees they used to charge the cable guys for those sites. Magazine ad dollars were down.
Time Inc., or whatever the new company will be called, should still be profitable for a while, though. The company lost $9 million this quarter, but that’s because it spent $53 million firing about 6 percent of its workforce.
