Time Inc. will prune its huge magazine portfolio by seeking buyers for 18 of its smaller titles, leaving it to concentrate on larger properties like Time, People and Sports Illustrated.
The titles to be sold include Popular Science, Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Yachting, the company announced Tuesday. News of the planned sales was reported earlier in the day by Advertising Age magazine.
In a memo to Time Inc. staff, CEO Anne Moore said the “smaller niche brands” being put up for sale “no longer fit with our strategy for Time Inc.’s future.”
Moore said the company intended top focus on its largest and most profitable brands in both their print and online versions, such as Sports Illustrated, InStyle and People. “I am confident that the biggest brands in print, with our expertise and support, will develop into the biggest brands online,” Moore said in the memo.
Long a reliable profit center for parent company Time Warner Inc., a major media conglomerate that also owns Warner Bros., AOL, CNN and HBO, Time Inc. has struggled recently along with other magazine publishers, partly because more readers and advertising have been going to the Internet.
Last month Time Inc. posted a 2 percent decline in revenues and an 11 percent fall in profits for the second quarter.
Magazines aimed at young adults have been particularly hurt as more people go online for news and entertainment. In July Time Inc. stopped publishing Teen People magazine, but kept its Web site going.
Time Inc. went through a major corporate overhaul last December that Moore said was intended to “de-layer” the company and make it more efficient.
That revamp resulted in several senior executives leaving the company, including Eileen Naughton, the president of Time, as well as David Kieselstein, the head of Parenting and other related magazines. Parenting and Babytalk are among the magazines now being put on the block.
Even after the sales, Time Inc. will still be a huge magazine publisher, with more than 130 magazine titles that include Fortune, Time and InStyle. The other titles headed for sale include MotorBoating, Ski, Skiing and SaltWater Sportsman.