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Time plans to discharge 600 jobs

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-10-29 11:28

Time Inc., the world's largest magazine company and a major subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner group, is planning a shake-up with more than 600 job-cuts, or 6 percent of its workforces.

The latest move is largely due to the pinch of the sweeping world economic recession, as well as lagged business performance due to readers' callous move to the web, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Ann Moore, the company's chief executive, told employees in a memorandum late Tuesday that the company, facing steep drops in advertising revenue, would reconstruct itself into three business units in an attempt to shake off its less than satisfactory performance in the latest revenue report.

Related readings:  Wave of job cuts sweeps across corporate America  Merrill expects thousands of job cuts  US angst-ridden economy leads to more job losses

In the earning report of Time Warner on August 6 for the second quarter of 2008, Time Inc. saw a 6 percent, or $77 million, decline in revenue to $1.2 billion with operating income down 15 percent to $218 million, according to the New York Times' report.

Time Warner is the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate that also owns big brands like Warner Brother movie studio, AOL and cable networks CNN and HBO. Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner CEO, said to the New York Times that both AOL and Time Inc. "are tracking behind our expectations this year."

Time Inc.'s 24 magazines in US and their Web sites will be reorganized into three divisions -- news, lifestyle and entertainment -- to allow Time Inc. to focus on its front-rank publications like Sports Illustrated, People, Time and Fortune. And the reconstructed units will step up the internal sharing of writers between magazines, reversing the previous diffuse combination with individual publishers and editors essentially running their own magazines and shows.

Dawn Bridges, senior vice president for corporate communications at Time Inc., said in the future, "we'll have a more centralized management structure that will group together titles that share similar audiences, advertisers and the talents and skills of their staffs," according to the New York Times' report.

After a series of depressing news of worldwide layoffs in almost all industries, from IT giant Yahoo and Dell to auto heavyweight GM and Toyota, from beverage big shot Pepsi to banking elite HSBC, the escalating carnage of job cutting blew its latest pound in the media industry. Newsroom staffing at the Los Angeles Times is shrinking again with 75 being laid off in the latest round of cuts, AP reported on Monday.