TIME WARNER INC.

the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The corporation resulted from the merger of the publisher Time Inc. and the media conglomerate Warner Communications Inc. in 1989. It acquired the Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS) in 1996. Time Warner Inc.'s products encompass magazines, hardcover books, comic books, recorded music, motion pictures, and broadcast and cable television programming and distribution. The company's headquarters are in New York City. Time Inc. was founded by Yale University graduates Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden in 1922, and the first issue of Time, the world's first weekly newsmagazine, appeared on March 3, 1923. Later additions to the company's magazine group were Fortune (1930), a business monthly; Life (19361972; revived 1978), a photojournalistic weekly; Sports Illustrated (1954), a sports weekly; Money (1972), a monthly on consumer finance; and People (1974), a weekly focusing on personalities. The company's magazines are part of the news and information group, which also includes Time-Life Books, the publisher Little, Brown & Company, and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Time-Life Books was launched in 1960 and now publishes book series and single titles in dozens of languages. In 1986 Time Inc. purchased Scott, Foresman & Company, a large publisher of textbooks, but Time sold that firm in 1989. The acquisition of TBS added the CableNews Network (CNN) to the news group. Time Inc. first moved into the broadcast and entertainment industry in the 1950s but in 1970 announced that it was selling its broadcast holdings to focus exclusively on cable television. The next year it bought a stake in American Television and Communications Corporation, a large cable-television operator, and, in 1972, it founded Home Box Office (HBO), which became one of the largest providers of pay-television programs. Time Inc. bought complete control of American Television and Communications in 1978. In 1983 HBO launched a joint venture with CBS Inc. and Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., for the formation of Tri-Star Pictures motion-picture company, which later came wholly under the control of Columbia. In 1989 Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications Inc., a media and entertainment giant descended from the Warner Brothers (q.v.) motion-picture studio. Warner Communications, besides being a major motion-picture and television studio, was one of the largest American producers of music recordings and a large cable-television operator. Time Warner bought two major cable-television operators, Houston Industries Inc. and Cablevision Industries Inc., in 1995. The WB, a broadcast television network founded by Time Warner, first aired in January 1995. In 1996 Time Warner purchased TBS, which owned several cable-television networks. The resulting entertainment group included all the Warner Communications, HBO, and other Time Warner holdings along with Turner's cable networks, two professional sports franchises, New Line Cinema (a film studio), and Castle Rock Entertainment (a television and film studio). Time Warner's telecommunications group operated cable systems that had about 11 million subscribers by the mid-1990s.