Time Warner (US)

Time Warner surrendered its role as the world's biggest media group during 2009, spinning off two of what it now considers to be non-core properties as it refocuses as a content business. The first to go was Time Warner Cable, demerged as an independent business in March 2009 although it still carries the company name. Far more significant in many ways was the year-end demerger of AOL. That company joined the group in 2000, in a deal which came to symbolize the madness of the dotcom era. Back then, friends and enemies alike promised that the deal would have a far-reaching effect on the way consumers access news, music and filmed entertainment. But within two years, the real question was whether the deal was even worth doing. The combined giant failed spectacularly to live up to all the rhetoric, and in early 2003 AOL Time Warner recorded the biggest loss in US history, almost $100bn, when it wrote off the value of its over-inflated assets, primarily America Online itself. AOL's contribution to the group continued to steadily decline, and Time Warner finally spun off the business in 2009 as a separate company. The slimmed down giant now concentrates its attention on the Warner Bros filmed entertainment stable, the Turner and HBO cable networks, and magazine publisher Time Inc. Advertising Age estimated global measured advertising expenditure of $1.5bn in 2008, making Time Warner the world's #23 advertiser.

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Time Warner website

Warner Bros Entertainment	Time Inc Publishing
Turner / HBO	America Online

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