Time Warner Ent. Units Under Scrutiny

[Nexonius]

Time Warner's going down because of Bewkes:

NEW YORK -- The departure of HBO Entertainment president Carolyn Strauss is the latest indicator that Time Warner's entertainment divisions are in flux.

Since Jeff Bewkes took over as CEO, the company has folded a movie studio, set about re-creating its specialty film operations and might soon examine its already arms-length relationship with the CW and broadcast television in general.

At the same time, Time Warner has made significant investments in non-entertainment entities, last week spending $850 million for a social networking site, Bebo, with little potential to complement its film and television operations.

The moves are part of a larger rethink at Time Warner that entails scrutiny of its entertainment assets. While Bewkes has focused on pet Wall Street topics such as the potential spinoffs or sales of AOL and Time Warner Cable, he's also given strong indications of how he'll approach the entertainment.......................


Read the rest here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...532cd7c43e5d95

[DrTooth]

And the list of surprised people continues to dwindle.

Time Warner... make ONE freaking good decision. Maybe then you won't be going down.

[Mikintosh]

I'm amazed that the studio that owns the rights to (off the top of my head) Looney Tunes, Batman, and Superman, as well as producers of Gilmore Girls and Friends is having a hard time making money. The problem of having a monstrous octopus of a corporation, I suppose.

[Temple Fugate]

Unless I'm reading the article wrong, most of TW's actions look like good things. The HBO problem is one of the only downsides from that list of changes to the company. They're leaving their other cable nets alone, they've folded New Line, which was horribly mismanaged before thanks to the LotR money debacle, they're distancing themselves from the sinking ship that is the CW.

Bewkes' money-saving measures are probably going to turn out all right for the company, unless he makes a real bone-headed move, which is always possible.

[DrTooth]

Seems like they want to right themselves, and some of it has been done alright. But I still think closing their animation department only opening it for DTV's is pretty shallow. They don't have a huge merchandising bonanza outside of The Batman? Well, that's the fault of the programming directors and producers, not the animators or writers.