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Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is looking to sell most of Time Inc.’s magazines for about billion, including the well-known titles above. (WireImage)
In one of the largest landscape-changing magazine deals in recent years, Meredith is negotiating to buy People, InStyle and most of the other Time Warner-owned titles for about $3 billion, people familiar with the deal said.
The sale would rip apart the Time Inc. stable of well-known magazines — and it has already stirred anger and resentment inside the nation’s largest magazine publisher.
Many insiders are predicting there will be a huge talent drain if Midtown’s Time Inc. is gobbled up by the smaller Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith, publisher of Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle and Fitness.
Meredith, with a market cap of $1.7 billion, would be swallowing much of Time Inc.
Time Inc.’s male-skewing titles — Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune — are not part of the proposed sale, according to a report in Fortune, which first reported Time Warner brass were huddling with a “serious buyer.”
“A lot of Time Inc. is about glamour — what does Meredith know about glamour?” groused one insider at the Time & Life Building as the news broke yesterday. “A lot of the talent will be leaving before the ink is dry on a deal,” the source said.
Titles aimed at women, which also include Real Simple, Sunset, Southern Living and Cooking Light, would be sold.
The stable of titles is expected to fetch between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion, sources said.
The executive who seems to be most in the cross hairs is Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang, who arrived a year ago from Digitas, the digital advertising agency, amid much hype about building the online side of the struggling print giant.
Since she took office in January of last year, Lang has underwhelmed many insiders. Complaints about her style were said to have captured the attention of Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes.
“The reason this deal is getting done is because Bewkes lost faith in her,” said a second insider.
One of her few initiatives was to start a centralized TV video unit, where she raided J.R. McCabe from Meredith to head it up.
Last month, she unveiled a plan to trim 500 jobs from the 8,000-person payroll.
Meredith, despite a lineup with less pizzaz than Time Inc., managed to post revenue gains of 3 percent in the most recent quarter at its magazine group and 9 percent in its television division.
In the six months ended Dec. 31, Meredith’s profit rose 13.5 percent to $60.4 million on a 15.3 percent gain in advertising revenue.
Time Inc. had full-year revenue of about $3.4 billion, down 6 percent from a year earlier, while its operating income plunged 25 percent to $420 million.
Time Warner, Time Inc. and Meredith declined to comment.
BDT Capital, which had worked with Meredith on its acquisition of AllRecipes.com a year ago, was said to be working with Meredith on the deal, according to Fortune.
A BDT spokesperson did not return calls.