Time Warner

Media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday that its second-quarter profit grew 14 percent, thanks to higher revenue from its TV channel business, video games and movies such as "The Hangover Part II. " The owner of HBO, Warner Bros. and People magazine reported net income of $638 million, or 59 cents per share, in the April-June period, up from $562 million, or 49 cents per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were 60 cents per share in the latest quarter, above the 55 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet had expected.

Already the largest cable television provider in Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable Inc. now wants to become the dominant sports programmer in the region. On Oct. 1, the New York company will launch two regional sports networks: Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Spanish-language network Time Warner Cable Deportes. The cable operator has shelled out billions of dollars to snag the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West and now has its eye on the Dodgers too. The company is tired of being held hostage by high-priced sports channels and has decided to stop fighting the competition and begin imitating it. The cable operator, which has about 2 million subscribers in Southern California, is taking steps to cut out the middle man. That middleman is News Corp., parent of local cable channels Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket and a formidable opponent.

Time Warner, the media conglomerate behind Warner Bros., HBO, CNN and DC Comics. said Wednesday its third-quarter net income declined, but adjusted earnings surpassed Wall Street's expectations thanks to growing subscription and ad revenue in its networks business. Providing more evidence that the advertising freeze has begun to thaw, the company again raised its adjusted earnings outlook for 2010, saying it now expects percentage growth in the high 20 percent range. In August Time Warner said it expects growth of "at least" 20 percent, another raise from the prior quarter.

The cancellation and hefty write-down of HBO's"Luck" and the closure of a TV channel in India put a damper on an otherwise solid first quarter forTime Warner Inc. The New York media giant reported a profit of $583 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with $653 million for the same period in 2011, an 11% drop. Revenue was up 4% to $7 billion. "We're off to a great start to the year, and we're benefiting from strong momentum for our content across our businesses," Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday.

I've always admired the way phone companies charge a monthly fee for people not to be listed in a phone book. I mean, talk about chutzpah -- charging customers to not receive a service they didn't even ask for in the first place. But Time Warner Cable takes the cake. The company charges 99 cents a month for its telephone customers to not be listed in a directory that the company doesn't even publish. Time Warner outsources the entire operation.

Question: Can I expect my shares of Time Warner Inc. to continue to gain in value? Answer: Long-term success for this media and entertainment company is likely to depend on original thinking in adapting to a changing media landscape. Time Warner owns cable TV channels HBO, CNN, TNT and TBS; movie studio Warner Bros.; and such magazines as People, Time and Sports Illustrated. It generates nearly one-third of its sales outside the U.S. The company's bottom line is likely to get a boost this year from film sequels "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," "The Hangover: Part II" and "Happy Feet 2. " On the smaller screen, TBS has a late-night hit on its hands with "Conan," but HBO has yet to equal past blockbusters "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City.

In 2000, America Online Inc. used its soaring stock price to gobble up Time Warner Inc. and create the world's largest media conglomerate. Nearly a decade later, it's Time Warner that's spitting out AOL. Time Warner said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it intended to spin off the struggling Internet property, whose advertising revenue plunged 20% in the first quarter. AOL's decline contributed to falling sales and profit at Time Warner.

It was only 54 seconds. That's how much of the Dodgers game some Time Warner cable customers missed Wednesday night. Hardly worth complaining about, except here's what happened in those 54 seconds: Manny Ramirez, on Manny Ramirez Bobblehead Night, hit a pinch-hit grand slam, a game-winner actually, into the part of Dodger Stadium called Mannywood.

A strong "Hangover" wasn't enough to keep Time Warner from becoming the latest media conglomerate to get hit by the soft advertising and DVD markets. The parent company of Warner Bros. reported a 34% decline in net income to $519 million and a 9% drop in revenue to $6.8 billion for the second quarter. Results were dragged down by troubled online division AOL, which will be spun off into an independent company later this year, and magazine group Time Inc.

Time Warner Inc. wants more juice out of TMZ, the celebrity website that is the brainchild of former Los Angeles TV newsman Harvey Levin. The media giant hopes to wring more advertising revenue out of the property and use some of the money to expand the news operation, according to people close to the site who were not authorized to speak publicly. That's the plan once Time Warner takes full control of TMZ today, when the media giant spins off AOL to shareholders. Since its launch by former KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Levin in December 2005, TMZ has been run as a partnership of AOL and the Telepictures unit of Warner Bros.

WASHINGTON - Verizon Wireless plans to sell billions of dollars' worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum primarily from large cable companies. Verizon, which paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band, said it no longer would need that spectrum to deploy its fourth-generation LTE network if the cable deals are approved. Among the spectrum Verizon plans to sell are swaths covering Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.

The gig: As president of Warner Bros. International Television, Jeffrey Schlesinger, 56, oversees sales of Warner television and movie products abroad and oversees a dozen WB-owned production companies in Britain and the Netherlands. International sales of Warner content generates billions of dollars a year in revenue for parent company Time Warner Inc. Tuning in. As a child growing up in suburban Philadelphia, Schlesinger was obsessed with TV. Frustrated with having only a couple of channels, his family took matters into their own hands.

"Two Broke Girls" and one rich CEO. CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves vaulted to the top of the media pay ladder in 2011 with a compensation package valued at $69.9 million, according to documents filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 62-year-old executive's package jumped 21% over the $57.7 million that he reaped in 2010. For the last two years, Moonves has received bonuses of $27.5 million. Moonves' base salary was $3.5 million. Last year, he also received nearly $8.5 million in stock and options awards valued at $27.3 million.

On the eve of the anticipated approval of the Dodgers' sale, the team appeared to resolve a potentially significant hurdle. In a court filing Thursday, the Dodgers said Fox Sports would get confirmation from the new owners that Time Warner Cable would not be directly or indirectly involved in the purchase of the team. The court is expected to approve the sale in a hearing Friday. Under its settlement with the Dodgers, Fox had the right to challenge any sale in which rival Time Warner Cable was involved.

On the eve of the anticipated approval of the Dodgers' sale, the team appeared to resolve a potentially significant hurdle. In a court filing Thursday, the Dodgers said Fox Sports would get confirmation from the new owners that Time Warner Cable would not be directly or indirectly involved in the purchase of the team. The court is expected to approve the sale in a hearing Friday. A Fox spokesman declined to comment. Under its settlement with the Dodgers, Fox had the right to challenge any sale in which rival Time Warner Cable was involved.

The Lakers have agreed to multiyear deals with broadcasters Bill Macdonald and Stu Lantz , making them the centerpiece of the team's move to a newly created Time Warner Cable channel next season, The Times has learned. Macdonald is in his first year as the Lakers' play-by-play announcer, and Lantz is in his 25th year as their color commentator. After a decades-long partnership with Fox Sports West and Channel 9, the Lakers begin a 20-year deal with Time Warner Cable next season.

Some companies keep their eyes on the bottom line and their ears to the ground. Time Warner Inc. has placed theirs on the company's new corporate logo, designed by New York's Chermayeff & Geismar Associates. Ivan Chermayeff said the logo defines the company. "We simply asked ourselves, what is the business of Time Warner," Chermayeff said. "At its elemental level, Time Warner's products appeal to the eye and the ear."

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes is indisputably among the nation's highest-paid executives, but compared with his fellow media moguls, he is eking out a meager living. The New York media conglomerate that owns Warner Bros., HBO, TNT and Time magazine revealed Monday that Bewkes' 2011 compensation package was worth $25.9 million, down 1% from 2010. David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications Inc., meanwhile, got a 23% raise in 2011 to $52.4 million. Other recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that, although there was some disparity, media chiefs again were richly rewarded.

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes touted his company's digital initiatives for television and film while promising to invest more in content in 2012 as the media conglomerate reported improved results for the final quarter of 2011, slightly beating analysts' estimates. Revenue for the New York company was up 5% for the fourth quarter and 8% for the full year to $8.2 billion and $29 billion, respectively. Net income rose a fraction of a percent to $769 million for the quarter and $2.89 billion for the year.