Tycoons Row

What would make a magazine company with magazines that are read 340 million times each month worldwide by 173 million adults over 18 years of age, and where 2 out of 3 adults in the United States alone read a Time Inc. publication on a monthly basis, layoff their employees? Is it a sign of the “Times”?Today, layoffs were prevalent amongst some of Time Inc.’s premier magazines. Katharine Seelye, of the New York Times writes about it here. She reports about 292 people were laid off, in magazines such as People, Time (Time Inc.’s premier flagship magazine), Sports Illustrated and Fortune. The cuts were aprox. 2.6 % of stafffing and the risk was spread out throughout their global staff globally.

Time Warner Inc., a leading global media and entertainment company with businesses in filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems and publishing which owns Time Inc. Time Warner’s publishing business units generate $5.278 billion in revenues collectively, and Time Inc. provides a large portion of that total revenue. So, is there pressure to cut costs? Are magazine sales declining?
Well, Time Inc.’s business strategy has been revolved around cost-management, acquisitions, and innovation. In this case, Time Inc. has decided to evolve and restructure their business unit by cutting costs and expanding online. They plan to reduce the amount of editors and correspondents in creating articles for their magazines.

Overall, I think that Time Inc. is jumping on not only expanding their online presence but also sees the opportunities and value of user-generated content, social networking, and blogging. There is definitely a strategy brewing here as at the end of the day the goal is to increase revenues, subscriptions and readers. Already, you have consumer products companies utilizing a social networking model (Dove- Inside & Out & Doritos–Crashing the Superbowl, etc.) to increase their reach, and now it’s probably time for media conglomerates to jump on that same bandwagon.

Time Warner, a media conglomerate, owns a multitude of brands. Time is just one of them. Here’s a list of this giants media power:

• AOL
• Time Warner Cable
• HBO
• Turner Broadcasting System
• New Line Cinema
• Warner Bros. Entertainment
• Time