American magazine publishing company
Time Inc. (also referred to as Time &amp; Life, Inc. later on, after their two onetime flagship magazine publications) was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New York City. It owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake "Time", "Sports Illustrated", "Travel + Leisure", "Food &amp; Wine", "Fortune", "People", "InStyle", "Life", "Golf Magazine", "Southern Living", "Essence", "Real Simple", and "Entertainment Weekly". It also had subsidiaries which it co-operated with the UK magazine house Time Inc. UK (which was later sold and since has been rebranded to TI Media), whose major titles include "What's on TV", "NME", "Country Life", and "Wallpaper". Time Inc. also co-operated over 60 websites and digital-only titles including "MyRecipes", "Extra Crispy", "TheSnug", HelloGiggles, and "MIMI".
In 1990, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to form the media conglomerate Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery). In 2018, media company Meredith Corporation acquired Time Inc. for $2.8 billion. Meredith was then acquired by IAC and merged with Dotdash to form Dotdash Meredith three years later, thus resulting in IAC gaining most of the former Time Inc. assets.
History.
Beginnings.
Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led its founders Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922. Later that same year, they formed Time Inc. Having raised $86,000 of a $100,000 goal, the first issue of "Time" was published on March 3, 1923, as the first weekly news magazine in the United States. Luce served as business manager while Hadden was editor-in-chief. Luce and Hadden annually alternated year-to-year the titles of president and secretary-treasurer. Upon Hadden's sudden death in 1929, Luce assumed Hadden's position.
Growth.
Luce launched the business magazine "Fortune" in February 1930 and created/founded the pictorial "Life" magazine in 1936, and launched "House &amp; Home" in 1952 and "Sports Illustrated" in 1954. He also produced "The March of Time" radio and newsreel series. By the mid-1960s, Time Inc. was the largest and most prestigious magazine publisher in the world. (Dwight Macdonald, a "Fortune" staffer during the 1930s, referred to him as "Il Luce", a play on the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was called "Il Duce".) Once ambitious to become Secretary of State in a Republican administration, Luce wrote a famous article in "Life" magazine in 1941, called "The American Century", which defined the role of American foreign policy for the remainder of the 20th century, and perhaps beyond.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aware that most publishers were opposed to him, issued a decree in 1943 that blocked all publishers and media executives from visits to combat areas; he put General George Marshall in charge of enforcement. The main target was Luce, who had long opposed FDR. Historian Alan Brinkley argues the move was "badly mistaken", for had Luce been allowed to travel, he would have been an enthusiastic cheerleader for American forces around the globe. But stranded in New York City, Luce's frustration and anger expressed itself in hard-edged partisanship. Luce, supported by Editor T. S. Matthews, appointed Whittaker Chambers as acting Foreign News editor in 1944, despite the feuds Chambers had with reporters in the field.
In the 1950s, the Time Inc. executive Brumbaugh made presentations to the Post Office Department to explain how Time Inc. was using a zoning system to speed the delivery of its magazines. Although the Post Office Department had instigated zones in 1943, they were inconsistently applied. As cited in FYI, Time Inc.'s internal newsletter "'Fewer than 40% of the cities were properly zoned,' he recalls. 'I went to the Post Office Department and showed them how we were making the zone system work.'" In 1963, the United States Post Office introduced ZIP codes.
Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, maintained a position as an influential member of the Republican Party. Holding anti-communist sentiments, he used "Time" to support right-wing dictatorships in the name of fighting communism. An instrumental figure behind the so-called "China Lobby", he played a large role in steering American foreign policy and popular sentiment in favor of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling in their war against the Japanese. (The Chiangs appeared in the cover of "Time" eleven times between 1927 and 1955.
In 1961, Time Inc. entered the book publishing business that combined the resources of their magazines with the formation of Time Life (it later became the holding company for television and radio stations and had a film production division, Time Life Films and a record label). Time Inc. later acquired Boston-based Little, Brown and Company (later integrated into Time Warner Book Group following its merger with Warner Books, now known as the Hachette Book Group since its 2006 acquisition by Hachette Livre) for $17 million in January 1968.
Time Inc. also owned pioneering cable network Home Box Office (HBO).
In 1974, Time Inc. launched the celebrity-focused magazine "People".
In February 1985, Time Inc. announced that it would acquire the Birmingham, Alabama-based Southern Progress Corporation, publishers of the "Southern Living" magazine for $480 million.
In 1987, Time Inc. and Robin Wolaner launched the parent-focused magazine "Parenting" (Time Inc. later purchased the remaining stake in the magazine held by Wolaner on January 5, 1990, several days before the completion of merger with Warner Communications)
Merger with Warner Communications.
In 1987, Time Inc. lost its ownership stake in the USA Network, which it held since 1981. The merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications was announced on March 4, 1989. During the summer of that same year, Paramount Communications (formerly Gulf and Western Industries) launched a $12.2 billion hostile bid to acquire Time Inc. in an attempt to end a stock swap merger deal between Time and Warner Communications. This caused Time to raise its bid for Warner to $14.9 billion in cash and stock. Paramount responded by filing a lawsuit in a Delaware court to block the Time/Warner merger. The court ruled twice in favor of Time, forcing Paramount to drop both the Time acquisition and the lawsuit, and allowing the formation of the two companies' merger which was completed on January 10, 1990. Effectively, Time took over Warner, resulting in a new corporate structure and the new combined company being called "Time Warner".
In November 1990, Time Inc. announced that it would acquire the remaining stake in Hippocrates Partners (Time earlier purchased its 50% stake in July 1988).
The Pathfinder website was launched in 1994, with content from the Time, People and Fortune magazines. It was shut down in 1999.
On October 20, 2000, Time Inc. announced that it would acquire the magazine division of Times Mirror Company that includes "Field &amp; Stream", "Golf Magazine", "Outdoor Life", "Popular Science", "Skiing" and "Yachting" from the Tribune Company for $475 million, the merger was subsequently completed in November of that year, forming Time4Media (the magazines in the division, with the exception of "Golf Magazine" and the Parenting Group were sold to Bonnier Group in 2007)
In January 2005, Time Inc. announced that it would purchase a remaining stake in New York City-based Essence Communications, publishers of the "Essence" magazine that it not already own. (Time already purchased 49% stake in the magazine in 2000)
In 2008, Time Inc. launched Maghound, an internet-based magazine membership service that featured approximately 300 magazine titles from both Time Inc. brands and external publishing companies. On January 19, 2010, Time Inc. acquired StyleFeeder, a personal shopping engine.
In August 2010, Time Inc. announced that Ann S. Moore, its chairman and chief executive, would step down as CEO and be replaced by Jack Griffin, an executive with Meredith Corporation, the nation's second-largest publisher of consumer magazines. In September 2010, Time Inc. entered into a licensing agreement with Kolkata-based ABP Group, one of India's largest media conglomerates, to publish "Fortune India" magazine and the yearly Fortune India 500 list. Griffin was ousted after a brief tenure, eventually being replaced by Laura Lang, who served about a year.
Split.
On March 6, 2013, Time Warner announced plans to spin off Time Inc. into a publicly traded company. Time Warner's chairman/CEO Jeff Bewkes said that the split would allow Time Warner to focus entirely on its television and film businesses, and Time Inc. to focus on its core print media businesses. It was announced in May 2014 that Time Inc. would become a publicly traded company on June 6 of that year. The spin-off was completed on June 9, 2014. As of September 13, 2016, Rich Battista was promoted to president and CEO, replacing Joseph A. Ripp.
Time Inc. purchased American Express Publishing Corporation's suite of titles, including "Travel + Leisure", "Food &amp; Wine", "Departures", "Black Ink" and "Executive Travel" on October 1, 2013. On January 14, 2014, Time Inc. announced that Colin Bodell was joining the company in the newly created position of executive vice president and chief technology officer. However, he was let go May 19, 2016 On February 5, 2014, Time Inc. announced that it was cutting 500 jobs with most of the layoffs at American Express Publishing. From April 2014 to mid-2017, the Chairman of Time Inc. was Joseph A. Ripp, who had been Chief Executive since September 2013 and continued as Executive Chairman when replaced as CEO by Battista. Though Ripp had intended to remain Executive Chairman until 2018, he wound up leaving the board in 2017 and John Fahey served as non-executive chairman for the months prior to the company's sale to Meredith. On May 28, 2015, Time Inc. announced the purchase of entertainment and sports news site FanSided. In July 2015, "Time Inc." acquired League Athletics in Tucson, SportsSignup in Saratoga Springs, and iScore in Los Alamitos. The three companies will be a part of Sports Illustrated Play.
After attempting a few TV shows in 2014 and 2015, the company formed Time Inc. Productions in 2016 as its in-house production company. On February 11, 2016, Time Inc. announced that it has acquired Viant, a leading people based marketing platform and owner of MySpace. With the purchase of Time Warner by AT&amp;T, it was agreed that Time Warner television assets such as HBO also came under the AT&amp;T umbrella; after WarnerMedia spun off from AT&amp;T in 2021, these assets came under the fold of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Meredith and IAC purchases.
In February 2017, it was reported that Meredith Corporation and a group of investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. were considering purchasing Time Inc. In 2016, Time Inc. acquired Bizrate Insights. On April 28, 2017, the company's board of directors dropped the plan of selling the company and instead focus on growth strategies.
On November 26, 2017, it was announced that Meredith Corporation would acquire Time Inc. in a $2.8 billion deal. $640 million in backing will be provided by Koch Equity Development, but the Koch family will not have a board seat or otherwise influence the company's operations. Prior to the sale closing in January 2018, Time Inc. sold Essence Communications to Richelieu Dennis, the founder of hair- and skin-care products maker Sundial Brands. In January 2018, Meredith removed signage and references to Time, Inc., and Time, Inc. website was redirected to the Meredith's website.
In March 2018, only six weeks after the closure of the deal, Meredith announced that it would lay off 1,200 employees, and explore the sale of "Time", "Fortune", "Money", and "Sports Illustrated". The company felt that these brands did not align with its core, lifestyle-oriented properties.
Howard Milstein had announced on February 7, 2018, that he would acquire "Golf Magazine" from Meredith, and Time Inc. UK was sold to the British private equity group Epiris (later rebranded to TI Media) in late February. In September 2018, Meredith announced that it would re-sell "Time" to Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne for $190 million. Although Benioff is the chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce.com, "Time" will remain separate from the company, and Benioff will not be involved in its daily operations. In November 2018, Meredith announced to sell "Fortune" to Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon for $150 million. In December 2021, Meredith was acquired by IAC's Dotdash and became Dotdash Meredith; Barry Diller, the head of IAC, had previous relations with Time Inc. in the early 1980s when he was head of Paramount and helped make Time Inc. at one point a co-owner of the USA Network.
Offices.
"Time"'s offices were originally in the Chrysler Building. In 1938, they moved to the