Word: warners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...last week's merger activity confined to energy firms. In the latest round of what is shaping up as a complex battle for control of Warner Communications (1983 revenues: about $3.5 billion), Newspaper and Magazine Publisher Rupert Murdoch filed court papers accusing the entertainment conglomerate of racketeering and fraud. The charges by Murdoch, who now owns a little more than 7% of Warner's voting stock, also named a rival suitor, Chris-Craft Industries, as a defendant. Murdoch wants the court to overturn a recent swap that would give Warner a 42.5% interest in Chris-Craft...
...fast or crashed so rapidly as Atari, the onetime king of video games. From 1977 to 1982, annual sales zoomed from $200 million to $2 billion. But last year Atari lost $536 million in just the first nine months. Atari's collapse has left its parent company, Warner Communications, so weak that Warner is fighting for its life in a corporate takeover battle with Press Lord Rupert Murdoch. James J. Morgan, 41, then a vice president of Philip Morris, was hired last summer to rescue the ailing company. TIME Correspondent William McWhirter, a Princeton classmate (1963) of Morgan...
...choice of Morgan, a marketing wonder but a complete outsider to both Atari and computers, at first seemed like another bizarre Warner decision. Morgan was an Easterner in a Californian's game, a traditionalist in a rootless industry, a believer in long-term growth in a market hooked on quick profit and instant gratification, a technological skeptic among scientific true believers. Morgan had run the Philip Morris tobacco-marketing division, whose products included such fast-rising brands as Virginia Slims and Merit, with an almost ostentatious lack of computers. He preferred writing meticulous longhand notes on legal pads...
...Qube service enables subscribers using hand-held terminals to participate from their homes in programs ranging from quiz shows to televised public opinion polls. But after finding a lack of interest in the two-way offerings, Warner Amex decided to virtually close down its Qube network, which had been supplying 90 minutes of nightly two-way programming to 325,000 homes in six cities. While Qube subscribers will still receive up to two hours of locally originated two-way shows each day, they will have only occasional access to new network programs...
...blackout represents the latest cost-slashing move by former Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, 52, who left the Reagan Cabinet last January to become chairman of Warner Amex. It currently operates 121 cable systems in addition to the six Qube outlets in Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Houston and St. Louis. Under Lewis, Wirner Amex has embarked on such steps as an effort to cut existing cable service in Dallas, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. Even so, some analysts expect Warner Amex to run up more than $100 million in losses this year, on top of an estimated 1983 deficit of as much...