Time Warner Inc. has released their 2011 first quarter results, with the period ending on March 31, 2011. While overall revenue was up six percent from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011 for the company, publishing subscription revenue fell five percent (a total of $17 million).
This was offset by an increase of 18 percent, or $13 million, in other revenues.
Overall revenue for Time Inc.’s publishing segment remained flat from first quarter 2010 to first quarter 2011, dropping slightly from $799 million to $798 million.
Other Time Inc. news this week included the announcement that Sports Illustrated, Fortune and TIME print subscribers will be able to access the digital editions of the publications on Apple’s iPad for free. People magazine had struck up a similar deal with Apple in January.
According to their financial statement, Time Inc. saw flat advertising revenues for the first quarter of 2011. Time Inc. equates this to “the transfer of management of SI.com and Golf.com to Turner and the sales of certain magazines at IPC (‘the IPC Sales’),” according to a Time Warner press statement. Due to this transition, advertising revenues lost $15 million in first quarter 2011, as compared to first quarter 2010.
Reportedly, advertising revenues would have risen four percent without the negative impact of the transfer and IPC sales.
This past quarter was a record-breaking one for Time Inc. In January, People.com was the first magazine Web site to reach one billion monthly page views. People.com also reported 162 million page views for the Royal Wedding, which was twice the amount of the previous record (76 million hits) held for most page views in one day.
Further banking on the wild popularity of the April 29th nuptials between Prince William and Kate Middleton, People magazine released a special collector’s issue on May 2. Containing 105 ad pages out of the publication’s 220 pages, this is the largest number of ad pages People has seen since 2007.
