Time Warner to Set up High-Tech Fund

Seeking to steal a march on the incursion of digital technology into its core businesses, Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday that it will set up a $500-million fund to invest in new media and other emerging high-tech companies.

Half of that sum will represent advertising and promotional time on Time Warner cable and print media, which include Cable News Network, Home Box Office and the Cartoon Network, and Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People magazines. The rest will be in cash.

“We are putting a digital overlay over Time Warner,” said Richard Bressler, chairman and chief executive of the company’s 6-month-old Time Warner Digital Media unit.

In end-of-the year remarks to the corporation and its investors, Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin expressed his intention to “set in motion a digital make-over of all of Time Warner to ensure that a digital focus is integrated into every aspect of the company’s operations.”

Bressler said the rationale for the fund was to create a single stop for digital businesses seeking investments from the company--a change from the existing system, in which every unit of the vast media conglomerate has been free to consider such investments.

Shares of New York-based Time Warner rose 22 cents to close at $66.72 on the New York Stock Exchange.