Time Inc. No Longer Fears Web
Magazine-Publishing Group Generates More Revenue from Online Businesses than Print
By Gary Arlen -- Multichannel News, 6/1/2007 11:50:00 AM
Carlsbad, Calif. -- “Editors at Time Inc. don’t fear the Web anymore,” president Ann Moore told the D: All Things Digital conference here Thursday.
Why? One decade after its flawed first foray into online publishing known as Pathfinder, the Time Warner conglomerate’s magazine-publishing group now generates more revenue from online businesses than from its original print ones.
The crossover point came last year, Moore said.
Echoing a remark about the value of being a big brand by Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons at The Cable Show ’07 last month, Moore argued that brands such as People and Sports Illustrated can take advantage of their dominant positions. She cited the 17% annual growth of SI video-on-demand content and the 71 page views per visit on People’s Web site, making the 35-year-old magazine’s Web presence among the most trafficked in the competitive celebrity-journalism category.
In particular, Moore lauded the convergence of the company’s assets into new cross-promoted products, citing CNN Money, which brings together material from four of Time’s financial publications under the CNN banner.
She also identified video as a key ingredient for magazines’ online presence.
“If you want to play online, you’ve got to do short-form video. We’ve learned that we know how to do it,” she said. She endorsed such content by creating a HD video to introduce herself in a witty production in which Moore was accompanied by the actor who played Charlotte’s gay pal on Sex in the City, another Time Warner asset.
Among D’s other media prognosticators was legendary filmmaker George Lucas, who said his future work will largely be for television and Internet distribution (after he finishes the next Indiana Jones feature film and another project).
Lucas expects that by 2009, he will be making video programs, although he added that he does not yet have any distribution deals.
Lucas said he relishes the idea that he can produce 100 episodes of a TV show for the budget of one theatrical release. “Eventually we’ll be selling shows” on Internet media, he added. “Ultimately, that’s where the best part works.”
