Time Warner CEO Talks of Cable Success

Gerald Levin, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Inc., said Wednesday that Time Warner had lived up to its promise in February of making cable a self-financing enterprise and of reducing the company’s debt.

Talking to reporters after the final session of the national cable convention held in Los Angeles this week, Levin said the company “would not spin off cable.”

Some analysts have expected the company to make its cable group, the nation’s second-largest, a separate entity as part of its restructuring of the Time Warner partnership with US West, which includes some cable operations, Home Box Office and Warner Bros. studios.

But Levin said the partnership had been operating smoothly and insisted there was no problem between the two sides, despite the lawsuit US West filed in Delaware court in September to block the merger between Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

During an hourlong interview with Larry King at the close of the convention Wednesday, Levin called the matter a “contract interpretation problem” and said relations are good. “We expect to work together for the foreseeable future.”

Levin also told King he had “no fear” that the merger would get federal clearance. “As long as Ted Turner, Gerry Levin and John Malone want this to happen, it will,” he said.

Sources say the government inquiry has focused on the role to be played in the merged company by John Malone, the chief executive of the leading cable company, Tele-Communications Inc. Under the proposed merger, announced in September, Malone, through his Liberty Media Corp. cable programming company, would turn his nearly 20% stake in Turner into about 9% of Time Warner. Regulators are looking closely at the impact of having the top two cable systems interconnected.

Sources at the convention expect the government to come to a decision on the merger within three weeks, earlier than the June 15 deadline.

In a single moment of levity during the interview, Levin told King he kept a Time magazine with Turner on the cover at his desk. The story chronicled Turner’s rise from the ashes and the success of Cable News Network after years of being mocked.

Levin said Turner told him, “I have been on the cover of Time and you never will be.”