The coup that brought Newsweek star Fareed Zakaria to arch-rival Time Magazine this month signals a shift at the top of Time Warner: Could CEO Jeff Bewkes, media’s most un-mogul-like mogul, have finally discovered his mojo?
With the wooing of his close buddy and fellow Yale trustee Zakaria, Bewkes is firmly embracing a media business — magazines — after years of jettisoning one media segment after another.
That comes on the heels of other Bewkes initiatives, from installing former NBC star Conan O’Brien in late night at TBS to a new “Marketing Initiative,” a cross-company task force charged with maximizing content, products and talent across Time Warner’s vast breadth.
That’s big change for a Balkanized conglomerate notorious for its warring media fiefdoms. The new spirit of harmony “absolutely represents a cultural shift” in the past 12 to 18 months, as Bewkes finished downsizing, said Mark D’Arcy, president and chief creative officer of Time Warner Global Media, who also heads the marketing initiative task force.
“It all stems from Jeff,” D’Arcy told TheWrap.
As was the bold recruiting of Zakaria, one of the most influential global affairs stars in all of media, whose name has been bandied as a future secretary of state.
"Jeff Bewkes is a friend, someone I've known for years,” Zakaria told The Wrap. “He is also one of the smartest businessmen I've ever met … He has a better sense of how to navigate the changing media landscape than anyone I've talked to about it."
Before Bewkes arrived in 2002 at headquarters, a Columbus Circle landmark, Zakaria’s arrival couldn’t
have happened.
Zakaria suggested to TheWrap that Bewkes was a major reason that he he jumped (though Newsweek’s declining fortunes clearly provided a nudge.) The pair have more than mutual admiration in common – they are fellow members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations; and since 2006, the Yale alums also have been trustees of the university.
And according to a high-ranking executive close to both, Bewkes once sought Zakaria’s help on his desire to invest in a multibillion-dollar hedge fund run by the journalist's brother, Arshad.
(See sidebar: The Hedge Fund Ties That Bind Bewkes and Zakaria).
Neither Time-Warner nor Bewkes nor HBO co-president Richard Plepler, who also sought to invest, would discuss details – though they did not deny that part of their connection.
But the clarion message sent by Zakaria’s hire is that Bewkes’ makeover of Time Warner will include a big role for its magazine division. No lucid CEO would hire a buddy known the world over only to sell the company from beneath him.
It also signals that Bewkes’ cross-departmental initiative is taking hold.
It would’ve been a nonstarter merely to negotiate with Zakaria in the old Time Warner model. Now a story by Zakaria should seamlessly migrate across the multi-platforms of a streamlined and sharply focused content behemoth.
