Categories: OLD Media Moves

Time Inc. losing CNNMoney’s profits

Peter Kafka of Re/Code writes about how the spin off of Time Inc. means that it will lose the profits generated by CNNMoney.com.

Kafka writes, “A new SEC filing from Time Inc. offers a brief glimpse into the site’s economics: In the first quarter of the year, CNNMoney generated $9 million in revenue, down from $11 million last year. After splitting the profits with CNN’s parent group Turner Broadcasting, Time Inc. recorded a $1 million profit of its own.

“If you tease out those numbers for a full year, and assume they rise along with ad sales toward the end of the year, that’s a very respectable business, considering that CNNMoney’s 19 million uniques would be considered good but not great in a BuzzFeed/Facebook world of super-charged audiences.

“But that traffic — generated primarily from CNN’s main site — turns out to be plenty when you combine it with the high ad rates that a business site can charge.

“Time Inc. will still have digital business properties of its own when it splits off, courtesy of Fortune magazine. Time Inc. has largely neglected Fortune.com, but is starting to bulk it up with staff and resources now.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.