Time Warner and the Vision Thing

August 2005 By Denny Hatch

multipage

As Time Warner Goes, So Goes TIME

IN THE NEWS

Despite recent major world events like the London terrorist bombings in July and the late December tsunami in Thailand, newsweeklies continued to struggle for the first half of the year. Time magazine, published by Time Inc., saw circulation remain flat for the period at 4.05 million, while newsstand sales dipped 3.4 percent to 157,217 copies. Newsweek saw its newsstand sales plummet 14 percent to 126,163, while total paid circulation rose 1.8 percent to 1.05 million.

--Stephanie D. Smith

"ABC: Celeb Titles Enjoy Circ Gains"

MEDIAWEEK.COM, Aug. 16, 2005

NEW YORK - Financier Carl Icahn disclosed yesterday that he and a group of investors would press Time Warner Inc. to shed its cable-TV unit and embark on an aggressive buyback of $20 billion of its shares.

--Seth Sutel

"Icahn takes on Time Warner"

Associated Press, Aug. 16, 2005

The folks at TIME magazine sent me an e-mail offer--56 issues plus free access to the entire TIME archive going back to 1923 for $19.95. I had not been a subscriber to TIME for years, but if TIME wanted to give away the store the way GM is giving away automobiles, who am I to refuse?

TIME was the brainchild of Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, a pair of 1920 Yale graduates. Two years out of college they quit their jobs at the Baltimore News, raised $86,000 and launched TIME, at that time calling it The Weekly News-Magazine.

Shortly before he died, Luce wrote:

At last, after a year of preparations and frustrations, the first issue of TIME, dated March 3, 1923, was going to press. Soon after midnight, with Briton Hadden in command, almost the entire editorial staff was transported in three taxis from East 40th Street to the Williams Press at 36th Street and 11th Avenue, New York. There, until dawn, we stood around the "stones" (tables) of the composing room. Under Hadden's direction, we wrote new copy to fill holes, we rewrote to cut and to fit, and everyone tried his hand at captions for the 11 three-inch illustrations which, years later, were described as looking as though they had been engraved on pieces of bread. It was daylight when I got home and went to sleep. That afternoon, I found an uncut copy of the little magazine in my room. I picked it up and began to turn through its meager 32 pages (including cover). Half an hour later, I woke up to a surprise: what I had been reading wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was quite good. Somehow it all held together--it made sense, it was interesting …