Be careful what you wish for – you may get it.
The old caveat may be the best to explain the rise of Ann S. Moore, from a fresh-from-Harvard Business School, backroom bean counter in 1978 for then-independent Time to CEO of Time Inc. – still the world’s largest magazine publisher with titles that include People, Sports Illustrated, Time, Fortune and In Style.
Since her arrival in the executive suite in 2002, she has steered the division – with $5 billion in annual sales – through one of the bumpiest rides in its history as readers abandon magazines, as ad dollars flee to the Internet and as newsstand sales, in this digital age, erode.
As she slowly tries to turn battleship Time and capture new digital dollars, she’s slashed and burned over 1,000 people from the payroll. The jury is still out on whether she’ll be able to accomplish the makeover – or if anyone can reposition a traditional media giant into a digital powerhouse.
Remember, the layoffs may not be over.
McKinsey & Co., the management-consulting firm, is still poking around the company and appears to be ready to unleash more changes in its back shop operations.
While the fight is far from over, there may finally be some evidence that she is making progress.
One analyst last week issued one of the more hopeful signs of that transformation. Gordon Hodge of Thomas Weisel Partners lifted his revenue forecast for 2008 to $5.09 billion, partly on the news that digital ad revenue gains are now outpacing revenue declines on the print side.
That’s a vindication for Moore, 57, who admits that her rise to the top almost did not happen and that in 1998, while she was running the People group as its president, she almost took a corporate buyout.
“I don’t think my target [early on] was to be the CEO of Time Inc.,” she recalled in a recent interview in her corner office on the 34th floor of Time Inc. in Rockefeller Center. “When I was 48-years-old, I think I was the youngest person to qualify for a retirement package. I had a blast here, and I was thinking, what do I want to do next?”
It was the holiday season in 1998 and it was seven years after she had been appointed publisher of People. While at People, she viewed her job as one of “unlocking the brand’s potential. I felt like I was a kid let loose in a candy store.”
“When I got there, it [People] was still viewed as a dual audience news magazine.” She repositioned it as a women’s magazine with big supermarket clout, introduced special issues such as Sexiest Man Alive and Best and Worst Dressed and green-lighted money for new spin-offs such as Real Simple and In Style.
Still, in 1998, she was thinking of moving on. It was her husband and son who convinced her to stay on. From that point on, she set her sights on the top spot.
Four years later, in 2002, she was named CEO, succeeding Don Logan, an extremely popular executive who had racked up 48 consecutive quarters of growth. He was leaving just as the entire magazine industry entered a period of major upheaval, with the Internet bubble bursting, the recession in the post-9/11 era and then ad dollars drifting out of print and into the Web.
In her first year as CEO, the consecutive growth streak had come to an end and she found herself managing a very different Time Inc.
The days when she was pushing big, new magazine projects must seem like 100 years ago. More recently, the top executive was forced to shutter Teen People and Life, which she stuck with for two years, costing the company, sources estimated, about $80 million, and Suede, a fashion magazine aimed at African-American women.
Even in the digital world, a Moore project called Office Pirates quickly crashed and burned.
“It’s 2007,” said Moore. “We’re in a changing, dynamic industry. We try a lot of different things. If they don’t work, we move on,” said Moore. In other words, the days when Time would wait 10 years for a title to turn a profit, as it did with SI, are long gone.
There have been no new print titles in the past 18 months. The start-ups now are in the online world, Moore said.
In early 2007, the company completed its sale of 18 magazines including Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Transworld Snowboarding, and Parenting to Swedish publisher Bonnier for $220 million.
She also went through not one, but two major downsizings in a little over a year, firing about 500 people in a company where a job was once considered a lifetime employment contract.
With the sell-offs, the total headcount dropped by more than 1,000 to 10,500.
The bloodletting didn’t win her any friends.
“They have massive morale problems,” said one former magazine executive who now competes with the company in his new job. “No one appears to be happy that I speak to. They are just trying to survive.”
“I wouldn’t be the best judge of morale today, but I sense that we’re on the comeback trail because people are beginning to believe that we have a clear idea of where we need to go and how we’re going to get there,” said John Huey, editor-in-chief, Time Inc.
The former executive also questions whether Moore is the right person to lead the company into the future. “I think she’s a one-trick pony. If a magazine is outside her realm of familiarity, she doesn’t connect to it.”
Moore’s already acknowledged that she wants to step away and won’t seek another contract when her current deal expires in early 2010. She said she is actively working on a succession plan. Even after a larger succession unfolds at the parent company.
John Squires, now an executive vice president at Time Inc., is seen as the most likely internal candidate to run the division. Some observers are wondering if the new team will look outside for a new boss for the first time ever.
Susan Lyne, the CEO who helped stabilize Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia when the founder went to jail, has been mentioned as a potential replacement.
Time Warner is shooting down the recent rumors that a sell-off is coming in the near future. “The digital transformation of Time Inc. is under way and seems to be performing well,” said Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler. “The rumors that the company will be spun off or sold are untrue.”
Moore isn’t waiting for direction from the top. She has been busy pushing the digital side of the business.
Moore points to Sports Illustrated, which 10 years ago had only a smattering of spin-offs – an annual calendar from the popular swimsuit issue and little more. Now it is a heavily trafficked Web site that she said pulls in 1.5 billion page views per month.
“Page views plus minutes spent will be the new gold standard,” predicted Moore.
Will it and other digital moves return Time Inc. to the days of double-digit growth?
“Double digit?” she asks. “Not until I get all the assets in line. But I feel energized by what is unfolding here.” keith.kelly@nypost.com