Excellent explication of at least some of the problems at Time and CNN
In March of this year Forbes reported on the giant media company's decision to spin off it's magazine publishing empire, saying "Time Warner's publishing unit revenues have steadily declined for the past few years. From about $4.6 billion in 2008, these revenues came down to close to $3.3 billion in 2013."
This follows the effective death of Time's one-time competitor Newsweek, which was sold for a dollar to Sidney Harman. Is the media business a tough deal? Particularly for print in the day and age of cyberspace? Sure. But CNN is a cable news network - in fact, the nation's first. How could Time and CNN ever have gotten to the point where spin-offs and layoffs are the order of the day? (And not that long ago the liberal Washington Post, unable to make a profit, was sold to Amazon's Jeff Bezos.)
In a phrase? Why is this happening to Time and CNN? To borrow from ex-Bill Clinton strategist James Carville's telling description of the central issue of the 1992 election? It's the liberalism, stupid.
Read it all |