Reporting record quarterly profits, US media and entertainment giant Time Warner on Wednesday trained its sights on a possible bid for rival Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The New York-based company — which owns Time magazine, Warner Bros, CNN and HBO — said it posted a record profit of US$725 million in the first three months of this year.
Chief executive officer Jeff Bewkes said the company was “off to a great start in 2010” and confirmed that he was still interested in a long-discussed purchase of MGM.
Bewkes said buying MGM could make sense “but only at the right price,” adding that he had walked away from merger talks before.
Time Warner is still recovering from a disastrous merger with Internet company AOL, which resulted in AOL being spun off.
Time Warner lost US$13.03 billion in 2008, but said increased television subscriptions and the success of titles like Entourage, Sherlock Holmes and The Blind Side had boosted coffers early this year.
Its shares were trading down more than 2 percent on Wall Street after the earnings were announced, despite sounding an optimistic note about the outlook for a long-troubled sector.
Revenues for Turner Broadcasting and HBO rose 9 percent in the first quarter versus the same period a year before as advertising revenues soared 22 percent.
The picture was not so rosy for Time publishing, which saw a 1 percent decrease in revenues.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post announced on Wednesday it was putting Newsweek magazine up for sale, relinquishing the publication after more than 40 years in the latest sign of the news industry’s distress.
The magazine, founded in the 1930s, is now a global brand but has been losing money as it struggles with falling subscription and declining advertising revenue.
Newsweek is a lively, important magazine and Web site, and in the current climate, it might be a better fit elsewhere,” Washington Post Co chairman Donald Graham said in a statement.
“The losses at Newsweek in 2007-2009 are a matter of record,” Graham said. “Despite heroic efforts on the part of Newsweek’s management and staff, we expect it to still lose money in 2010.”
“We are exploring all options to fix that problem,” Graham said.
The Post Co said it had retained Allen & Company to explore the possible sale of the magazine, which was launched in 1933 and purchased by the Post Co in 1961.
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