The Times Mirror Company

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The Times Mirror Company

Times Mirror Square
Los Angeles, California 90053
U.S.A.
(213) 237-3700
Fax: (213) 237-3714

Public Company
Incorporated: 1884 as The Times-Mirror Company
Employees: 29,121
Sales: $3.63 billion
Stock Exchanges: New York Pacific

The Times Mirror Company is a publisher of books, magazines, and newspapers. It is among the largest of multiple-system cable TV operators in the United States, and operates four broadcast television stations, all network affiliates. The company publishes law books, technical and scientific books, business books, training manuals, and art books, among others. Magazines include Field & Stream, Home Mechanix, and Outdoor Life. Times Mirror publishes a broad range of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, with daily circulation in excess of one million. Its cable system is extensive, and its broadcast properties include four network affiliate stations.

From its unassuming beginnings as a four-page daily newspaper saved from an early demise by a printing and binding company, The Times Mirror Company has demonstrated a high degree of resourcefulness. More than 100 years and many new ventures later, Times Mirror in the early 1990s was still cross-pollinating the conventional and more advanced media. Its multimedia focus is held together by a clear devotion to journalism.

The Mirror Printing and Binding House, established in 1873 primarily for commercial printing, agreed in 1881 to print a new daily newspaper called the Los Angeles Daily Times, soon renamed the Los Angeles Times. The publishers abandoned the project shortly after it was launched, although the printers kept the newspaper going. Seven months later, Civil War veteran General Harrison Gray Otis was named full-time editor. In 1884 Otis and Colonel H.H. Boyce purchased both the newspaper and the printing company, incorporating them into The Times-Mirror Company. The hyphen was dropped before long. Two years later, Otis fully acquired the concern that declared itself “a new and hopeful candidate for a share of the patronage of the community.” The newspaper set out, through its headlines and stories, to attract new residents and businesses to the sleepy town of Los Angeles. Over time, the newspaper found itself promoting a free harbor at San Pedro, in 1891, and construction of the city’s first freeway, in 1930.

By 1948 Times Mirror had set off on its first buying binge, resulting in its acquisition of Publishers Paper Company of Lake Oswego, Oregon. In the 1980s, Publishers Paper emerged as the third-largest newsprint producer in the United States. About 70% of the newsprint produced by Publishers Paper in the early 1990s was sold to Times Mirror. Another major acquisition came in 1961 when Times Mirror absorbed Englewood, Colorado-based Jeppesen Sanderson, the world’s leading publisher of air navigation information and flight-training systems. Also in 1961, Times Mirror acquired the H.M. Goushā Company, a producer of modern travel maps and pioneer of the accordion-fold map, in San Jose, California.

By 1963 Times Mirror was expanding into other specialized publishing, acquiring New York City-based Matthew Bender & Company, the largest publisher of legal forms and legal treatises in the United States. Two years later the company acquired Chicago-based Year Book Medical Publishers, publishers of medical reference books. Times Mirror bought the 17-year-old art book publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc., of New York City in 1966. The following year, Times Mirror acquired the C.V. Mosby Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which has since become the world’s leading publisher of health-science books.

The company’s entrance into magazine publishing came in 1967 when it acquired Popular Science, Outdoor Life, Golf Magazine, and Ski Magazine. Within 20 years after the acquisition, Times Mirror Magazines, Inc. had more than nine million readers. It operated two national book clubs with annual sales in excess of two million books. Times Mirror’s other strategic move into complementary media came in 1968 when it purchased Co-Axial Systems Engineering Company and its seven cable franchises in southern California, with a base of 5,700 subscribers. Times Mirror embarked on rapid growth in cable that soon included the acquisition of smaller systems in southern California and on Long Island, New York, expanding its subscriber base to 22,000. Its most substantial increase in subscribers came with the 1979 purchase of Communications Properties, Inc., then the nation’s eighth-largest cable operator, in addition to three microwave companies in Ohio and Texas.

Under the leadership of Robert Erburu, in 1970, Times Mirror acquired the 91-year-old Dallas Times Herald. That same year, the company also acquired Newsday— the tabloid-sized Long Island, New York, daily, that had become the prototype for the nation’s suburban press. Its next major foray into new media was the formation of Times Mirror Broadcasting in 1970 that initially was comprised of KDFW-TV, Dallas, Texas, then known as KRLD-TV; KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas; KTVI-TV in St. Louis, Missouri; WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Alabama; WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; WSTM-TV in Syracuse, New York; and WETM-TV in El-mira, New York. Erburu became president in 1974.

In 1977 the purchase of Southern Connecticut Newspapers Inc. gave Times Mirror control of two of the oldest Connecticut newspapers, The Advocate of Stamford and Greenwich Time. The acquisition of The Sporting News Publishing Company of St. Louis, Missouri, that year gave Times Mirror control of The Sporting News, a weekly magazine dating back to 1886 that eventually narrowed its focus to become known as “Baseball’s Bible.”

Times Mirror’s 1978 acquisition of Graphic Controls Corporation of Buffalo, New York, was another bid to strengthen the company’s presence in the medical-information field with its production of recording charts, instrument marking systems, disposable medical products, and coated imaging papers. Times Mirror kept returning to its roots, however, for acquisitions that strengthened both its editorial muscle and revenue base. In 1979 Times Mirror acquired The Hartford Courant, of Connecticut the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper. The Courant’s proud heritage included reproducing the full text of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, when the paper was 12 years old. In 1980 Times Mirror acquired The Denver Post. Four years later, in 1984, the company acquired Call-Chronicle Newspapers, Inc., now The Morning Call, which serves a nine-county region in eastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.

To commemorate the beginning of its second century, Times Mirror adopted a new logo in 1984—a stylized version of the eagle that had appeared on the front of the Los Angeles Times and its other publications. In that year, Times Mirror’s profit of $420.8 million was an increase of 13% from a year earlier. The company’s 1984 revenues were a record $2.8 billion, also up 13% from the prior year. Newspaper publishing remained the single biggest revenue contributor.

In 1984 Times Mirror began a restructuring process that ended two years later in a flurry of buying and selling. In 1986 Times Mirror paid $600 million for A.S. Abell Company, owner of The Baltimore Sun. Times Mirror paid Dow Jones & Company $135 million for Richard D. Irwin Inc., a textbook publisher, in 1988. It also added Broadcasting (sold in May 1991) and The National Journal to its magazine holdings for $75 million and $10 million, respectively, during the restructuring, while selling the struggling Dallas Times Herald for $110 million. The company disposed of five television stations, a cable system in Las Vegas, Nevada, and a number of its non-media holdings. Times Mirror sold off $1 billion in assets and spent $750 million on acquisitions for its core print-and electronic-media businesses during the three-year restructuring.

In 1985 Newsday expanded, and began to publish New York Newsday, an edition targeted to the Brooklyn and Queens boroughs of New York City. In 1986 the company sold H.M. Goushā Company and the national book clubs. After 1986 Times Mirror turned its attention to capital expenditures, particularly in its newspaper operations, where equipment had to be updated. In 1987 it launched a five-year $385 million capital-investment plan, bringing new plant and facilities to the Los Angeles Times.

In 1987 David Laventhol succeeded Robert Erburu as president of Times Mirror although Erburu continued as chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Also that year, Times Mirror bought four magazines from Diamandis Communications for $176.5 million: Field & Stream, Yachting, Home Mechanix, and Skiing Magazine. The acquisition came at a time when Times Mirror began experimenting with new start-up publications, such as Sports Inc. , which folded after a 15-month trial for lack of advertiser support.

The company sold the money-losing newspapers Denver Post and Dallas Times Herald in separate deals for a total of $205 million to Dallas publisher William Dean Singleton. Among the other assets sold as part of the restructuring was an 80% interest in Publishers Paper.

Erburu brought Times Mirror through its restructuring to emerge in much better shape, in the midst of a nationwide advertising slump that adversely affected all of U.S. media, beginning in the second half of the 1980s. That development became especially critical for a company like Times Mirror, whose newspaper operations accounted for close to 60% of its overall corporate revenues. Newspaper segment operating profits declined 61% the first nine months of 1990 compared to the same period a year earlier. In the same period, net income fell 40% to $134.9 million.

In late 1990 workers at the Daily News in New York City went on strike, and Times Mirror’s New York Newsday, which competed with the Daily News, got a boost to its growth. Despite the fact that New York Newsday continued to lose money—a cumulative $100 million through 1989 by some analysts’ estimates— Los Angeles Times president and New York Newsday creator Laventhol continued to support New York Newsday.

By 1990 Times Mirror had become the 12th-largest multiple cable system operator in the country and operated four network television affiliates. It had spent $1.5 billion acquiring new businesses throughout the 1980s—$583 million on newspaper properties; $595 million on book, magazine, and other publishing acquisitions; $235 million on cable TV systems; and $82 million on broadcast properties. Capital expenditures during the previous decade totaled $2.53 billion—more than half of which was concentrated in its newspaper operations. During that same decade, revenues grew from $1.87 billion to $3.52 billion. The C.V. Mosby Company and Year Book Medical Publishers merged in April 1990 to become Mosby-Year Book.