Time Warner's Parsons: I Won't Sell Magazine Biz

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo interviews TWX's Dick Parsons
by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Television, Time Warner (TWX), Interviews, News Corp'B' (NWS), Dow Jones and Co (DJ)
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/05/03/cnbcs-maria-bartiromo-interviews-twxs-dick-parsons/

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has interviewed Time Warner Inc's (NYSE: TWX) Dick Parsons about a myriad of issues, and more of this will be showed later.

She asked Parsons about selling the magazine business: He noted that it has acquired magazines and that it has been pruning that back to what it thinks works inside the company. Parsons said he likes magazines and publishing and will stay in the field, which he has maintained before.

Bartiromo also asked him about the integration of print to online via AOL, People.com, Time.Com and the like: Parsons said letting AOL integrate all the properties didn't work from the start. AOL is a broad portal and the company wants to make its content available across many platforms and many formats. It wants to distribute as much content as it can. As far as keeping AOL, Parsons said it is increasing performance and once Wall Street understands that this is a sustainable model enabling it to grow faster than the industry as a whole, there will be more support of this strategy.

Bartiromo also asked "How do you drive revenues into new products at AOL?" Parsons noted that AOL needs users rather than subscribers. It wants to bring back people who left AOL (or those who were never there), and monetize the visits to keep revenues growing. AOL is in a growth mode again, he said. Bartiromo noted that the cash flows are something to be jealous of and asked about private equity. Parsons said they (private equity) are looking at committing capital to everything. The current construction of AOL is the horse to ride, and that's the plan.

Bartiromo's interview was pre-recorded and Parsons' message about his opinion on the News Corp (NYSE: NWS) offer to buy Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ) will be a topic. Stay tuned......