P. M. BRIEFING : Time Warner May Dump Textbooks

Newly combined Time Warner Inc. may sell its Scott, Foresman and Co. textbook unit, a Wall Street source and industry analysts said.

“Schoolbooks are not a core business of Time,” the Wall Street source said. “Other businesses sell directly to consumers, and schoolbooks are sold to schools, school boards. Therefore if anything is sold Scott, Foresman seems like a logical first choice.”

Time executives signaled as long as two years ago that Scott Foresman was a non-core business, and potential buyers may already have been contacted, analyst Ken Noble of Paine Webber said.

A spokesman for Time said final decisions on possible asset sales had not been made, and he emphasized that none of Time’s core businesses, such as its magazines or cable-television operations, are being considered as candidates for divestment.