Time’s Chief Defends Merger With Warner

Noting the continuing sales of American media and entertainment properties to foreign buyers, Time Inc. Chairman Richard C. Munro on Tuesday called the proposed $18-billion merger of his company with Warners Communications Inc. “good for the country.”

He made the assertion--and took indirect shots at network critics of the deal--in a speech in which he ticked off 10 entertainment or book companies that have been or will be bought by foreign companies.

“The rest of the world seems to already understand that, by the middle of the next decade, the communications business will be composed of a limited number of global giants,” Munro said.

The proposed Time-Warner merger “guarantees that at least one of the giants is going to be American,” he said.

The merger, announced March 5, will create the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, with interests in cable programming, cable systems, books, magazines, records, movies and television programming.

In an interview with The Times last week, CBS Inc. President Laurence A. Tisch slammed the proposed merger as a poor deal for Time shareholders and dismissed as “nonsense” the companies’ argument that media companies must combine to compete globally in today’s markets.

Munro, speaking at a luncheon held by the Cable Advertising Bureau at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, didn’t specifically respond to the comments of Tisch, who was in Los Angeles on Tuesday addressing a luncheon of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.

But Munro dryly noted that “some of our domestic competitors don’t like this deal” and drew laughter when he said they are “suffering from what Sigmund Freud might describe as a chronic case of merger envy.

“My advice to them is to save their energy to invest in finding the kind of match that will help keep them competitive in global markets,” he said.

None of the three major networks actually has said it opposes the Time-Warner merger, which still faces Federal Communications Commission and shareholder approval. But CBS and NBC each say the merger illustrates their need to be freed from government restrictions on their participation in ownership of programs and cable-TV systems.

Staff writer Diane Haithman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.