Time Warner’s filmed entertainment division grew 7 percent in the fourth quarter, bringing in $3.9 billion in revenue.

The disc rental delays, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told investors, “have enabled our titles to significantly outperform competitive titles without a window.”

Warner Home Entertainment recently extended from 28 to 56 days the delay in which it makes its movies available for rental on Netflix. It’s also trying to extend Redbox’s delay to 56 days, although the kiosk chain is resisting. “We’ll keep working to extend the window for kiosk owners and brick-and-mortar chains,” Bewkes said.

Time Warner’s growth was also spurred by its networks division, with subscriptions to HBO and and carriage fees for channels like TNT leading to a 5 percent growth in revenue to $3.5 billion.

For the entire year, Time Warner reported an 8 percent uptick in revenue to $29 billion and 7 percent growth in operating income to $5.8 billion.

Bewkes cited the HBO Go streaming initiative as a growth driver for the conglomerate’s subscription business, which also grew 5 percent in the fourth quarter.

He used the call to urge major cable carriers including Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) to make HBO Go available through connected TV devices including Roku, noting that greater accessibility to premium cable content will make consumers less likely to cancel their cable subscriptions in favor of over-the-top programming services.

“Not allowing the consumer to access premium content on any device they choose actually increases the relative value of over the top services that really offer the same programming at a later window,” Bewkes said.

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Under a newly extended agreement by the two parties, NASCAR will move much of the operations for its online and mobile platforms from Turner’s Atlanta-based studios to the racing league’s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., effective January 2013. Turner, which has operated the popular NASCAR digital platforms for the last 11 years – and has a broadcast relationship with the racing league dating back 28 years – will continue to sell ad time on the platforms.

Between 2006 and 2010, NASCAR’s TV viewership dropped 24 percent on the channels of broadcast partners Fox (NSDQ: NWS), Turner and ESPN (NYSE: DIS). Ratings rebounded by about 10 percent across the board last Sprint (NYSE: S) Cup season, but are still way off from their 2005 peak. An individual close to the league’s digital efforts said NASCAR wants to use its digital platforms to “evangelize” the sport and bring its metrics back closer to their 2005 peak.

NASCAR negotiated its current broadcast deals—which total $4.48 billion—with Turner, Fox and ESPN in 2005, and they went into effect in 2007. Those deals run through 2014. (NASCAR’s rights deal—of just over $500 million a year—is about half of the nearly $1 billion annually the NBA gets.)

Marc Jenkins, VP of digital media for NASCAR, says the league is satisfied with the popularity of the Turner-run NASCAR.com, which averages about 6 million unique users a month. Mobile usage has continued to expand through carriage by principal league sponsor Sprint, he added.

But NASCAR wants to use digital to grow the overall popularity of its sport rather than merely service advertisers – a goal that might not be so congruent with Turner’s long-term interest. “Turner has been a great partner, but at a certain point we can’t keep asking them for favors – we need to do a lot of things that are uniquely in our interest,” he said. “We want to do things like push our content out on YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) to reach a younger demo. There might not be a lot of ROI in that, but it helps drive the sport.”

While the new deal ends Turner’s editorial management of NASCAR digital—accounting and other parts of the operations will also be moving to Charlotte—it does extend their ad sales partnership through 2016. Matt Hong, senior VP and general manager of sports operations for Turner Sports, said he was unable to say just how many Turner Sports staffers will be affected by the move. “Things will be status quo through 2012, and then we’ll figure it out from there,” he said.

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In a BTIG blog post Tuesday, the widely read analyst suggested studios release movies via video on demand the same day as they debut in theaters, and charging consumers $20 to $25 for rentals. Typically, movies these days are out in theaters for three months before they’ve available in VOD, and the window has in the past been even wider than that.

Acknowledging that a number of studios experimented with early VOD last year, only to be smacked in the press and met with boycott threats by exhibition chains, Greenfield suggested they find strength in numbers. “If more than half the studios substantially reduced the theatrical-to-home video window,” he wrote, “exhibitors would simply have no choice – they have too much debt leverage to not play half the movies that are released into theaters. No more tests or trials, studios simply need to shift their model and the exhibitor backlash will evaporate.”

Last year, Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX), Sony (NYSE: SNE), Universal and Paramount (NYSE: VIA) endured a series of threats and public rebukes from the National Association of Theater Owners when they experimented with a VOD model that made movies like Adam Sandler’s Just Go With It available for $30 on DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) eight weeks after their theatrical debut.

The so-called Home Premiere offering on DirecTV has quietly faded away, however, with neither the participating studios or the satellite company publicly offering up any insight into how well it sold. Separately, in October, Universal announced a limited VOD trial among Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) cable subscribers in Portland, Ore., and Atlanta, making the Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy comedy-thriller Tower Heist available the same day as three weeks after its theatrical release for $60. The studio scuttled the plan after exhibition chains Cinemark and National Amusements refused to book the film.

So what would cramming early VOD down the throats of exhibitors offer Hollywood? Greenfield believes it would engage a segment of the market that has stopped seeing movies in theaters and with a higher-margin transaction. While studios get to keep $4 of every $8 domestic movie ticket, Greenfield argues, they could keep as much as 80 percent ($20) of a $25 day-and-date VOD purchase. “The reality is most people who were planning to go out to the movies would still go,” Greenfield also contends.

What about piracy? Never mind creeps with camcorders in movie theaters, what happens if VOD purchasers start creating more pristine illicit copies in the comfort of their home and go into the MegaUpload business en masse? Well, nearly all of Netflix’s streaming catalog is available through online piracy, Greenfield says, but the company still gets 21 million subscribers to pay $7.99 a month.

Given back-to-back years of recession at the domestic box office – the market declined 3.7 percent last years to $10.17 billion – convincing Hollywood to risk civil war by blowing up a century-old business model might be a tough proposition. Then again, independent producers and distributors – who don’t have much leverage to lose with the big exhibition chains – are enjoying notable success with simultaneous VOD releasing.

Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and Roadside Productions, for example, released Kevin Spacey title Margin Call on October 21 in theaters and through VOD providers like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC). To date, the $3.5 million film has grossed more than $5 million in each of those channels.

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But is Hollywood’s new movie cloud really ready for prime time? Can any initiative like this thrive without Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Disney? (NYSE: DIS) And even more important, what happens if they don’t get it right?

At CES, UltraViolet’s backers – which include Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX), Sony (NYSE: SNE), Universal and Paramount (NYSE: VIA), as well as major consumer electronics and retail brands – pushed aside complaints by early adopters that the system’s authentication process is too cumbersome.

The new format’s backers said that since new Blu-ray releases supporting UltraViolet began to roll off replication lines late last year, roughly 750,000 consumers have signed up for the program, which puts a DRM-steeped digital version of the movie they just bought on physical disc in the cloud and available for viewing on other devices.

For studios like Sony, which five years ago helped spearhead the formation of the 70-plus member group that created UltraViolet, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the initiative is crucial.

“We are talking about true DRM interoperability for the first time,” said Mitch Singer, chief technology officer for DECE member studio Sony, speaking at the alliance’s CES press event. “Consumers don’t have to worry about or make technology decisions before buying content. You’ll buy a device, you’ll download an app, it’ll be associated and branded UltraViolet, and you know your content will play.

Driven by consumers’ cooling DVD purchasing habits, the home entertainment sector has declined for the last seven years, dropping 2 percent in 2011, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a single-digit benchmark that was actually considered strong relative to recent yearly craterings.

Theatrical distribution—the other big-ticket studio revenue stream—has also seen better days, declining for the second straight year, with the domestic box office finishing 2011 with about $10.17 billion—off from $10.56 billion in 2010. Perhaps worse, movie attendance was the lowest it’s been since 1992. (Although, the lower-margin foreign exhibition market remains quite strong.)

The studios believe UltraViolet will help re-establish a higher margin urge to purchase movies on behalf of consumers, who have been more apt recently to engage in lower-margin activities, like stream films and TV shows on Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) or rent DVDs for a $1.20 a night from a Redbox kiosk.

Coupled with restraints on rental outlets—like Warner’s 56-day delay on providing new titles to Netflix—the studios believe UltraViolet won’t just kick-start the nascent business of electronic sell-through, but good old-fashioned disc-buying, too.

In a nutshell, UltraViolet works like this: Buy an Ultraviolet-signatory DVD, Blu-ray or EST title, and a digital version of the film lives in the cloud ready for you to access and play on up to 12 different devices. The system is designed with families in mind—up to six members of a clan can access an UltraViolet account, even if they don’t live in the primary domicile.

There are plenty of perks planned. At CES, for example, Samsung introduced a new Blu-ray player capable of uploading the user’s entire existing disc collection to the cloud for a nominal fee. Further, take the family to a hotel outfitted by DECE member LodgeNet, a provider of media and connectivity solutions to the hospitality industry, and you can access your movie collection from your room.

There are big benefits for the studios, too. They believe this buy-once, play-anywhere scheme will free consumers to once again build movie libraries, since they will now have more options in an electronics universe increasingly devoid of optical drives.

And Hollywood is anxious to get started—about 19 UltraViolet titles have been released since the fourth quarter, including Warner’s Green Lantern and Horrible Bosses, Sony’s The Smurfs and Universal’s Cowboys and Aliens.

Perhaps most notably, the UltraViolet label has appeared on the disc jackets of Warner’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2, which was the most popular film of 2011, grossing well over $1 billion worldwide.

And a promotional blitz is set to begin in the coming months, with DECE also announcing at CES a promotional partnership with another studio-backed consortium, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), the organization that helped get Blu-ray off the ground—albeit, quite slowly—six years ago.

“We’ll start having marketing messages—you’ll start seeing TV spots,” Singer said. “The [UltraViolet label] will be on every single disc.”

That speed to get into the market was second-guessed at CES this week, with accounts of early adopters frustrated by UlraViolet’s extensive digital rights management, which requires users to register at two different websites.

Singer boiled down these troubles as “unfinished carpentry” on a “great house,” but others were vexed by their inability to get their UltraViolet movies to play on mobile devices made by Apple, which notably hasn’t yet signed on to DECE.

The failure so far to gain a foothold into Apple’s closed technology universe has been a major detraction from UltraViolet, as has the non-participation of Disney, which has its own DRM locker project in the works, Keychest. DECE continues to talk to both parties about joining its coalition.

But at CES, it became apparent that even some of the studios that are on board with DECE aren’t necessarily all in yet, with Fox (NSDQ: NWS) revealing its decision to hold off on releasing UltraViolet movies until there are more retail outlets to sell them and more devices that play them.

In terms of the former, the announcement last week by Amazon that it will begin selling Warner’s UltraViolet offerings was a key step for an initiative that needed more retail backing.

Concurrently, however, DECE revealed that Netflix had quietly let its DECE membership lapse. It wasn’t a surprise to many to see Netflix pull out of UltraViolet, given Netflix CEO’s Reed Hastings’ historical reluctance to get into the movie-selling business. At one point, Netflix’s player app was seen as a nice work-around for playing UltraViolet movies on the iPad and iPhone. Movie social network site Flixster, which was acquired by Warner last year, now has the only app for playing UltraViolet movies on both PC and Apple platforms.

For his part, Singer downplayed all of these concerns, noting that UltraViolet is still in its “very, very early” stages of development. “You could almost consider this a beta launch,” he added.

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A magazine-shaped promo piece stacked in the publication bins but with none of the publishers’ content inside. Instead, the company played up its tablet editions and their cross-device access by offering them all free of charge at CES for download to iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet/Nook Color and Android devices via NextIssue. (You can try it this weekend; the free trial ends Sunday night.)

A magazine-shaped promo piece stacked in the publication bins but with none of the publishers’ content inside. Instead, the company played up its tablet editions and their cross-device, all-in-one subscription access by offering them all free of charge at CES for download to iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet/Nook Color and Android devices via NextIssue. (You can try it this weekend; the free trial ends Sunday night.) The downloaded issues will be accessible on devices after the promo ends.

I wasn’t at CES but I heard about this when I was working on another story and it caught my attention. Instead of handling out cards for one free download or sticking with a single title or device, the company tried something that matches the best of its digital intentions: getting attention for its tablet strategy, while showing the device makers it can be a good partner and stressing an ecumenical approach at the same time.

A spokesperson says “thousands” of people have used the code but wouldn’t give it a range; the most popular title is the one that usually includes the most tech coverage, Time.

Time Inc. isn’t alone in trying to get this kind of attention for its mass of tablet mags. Conde Nast, for instance, has been highlighted on the Kindle Fire since launch with 90-day free trials of its titles in a promo play aimed at getting subscribers from new device owners. Time Inc. is also trying a more traditional promo play with a digital twist with its new Nook deal: subscribe to People on the Nook for a year at $9.99 a month and get a Nook Tablet free.

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As a Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner-owned cable conglomerate, Turner usually fashions these reports to highlight the precipitous migration of viewers from broadcast networks like Fox (NSDQ: NWS), CBS (NYSE: CBS), ABC (NYSE: DIS) and NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) to cable networks like TNT and TBS. (This kind of data spin comes in handy when you’re trying to change perceptions on Madison Avenue, and get the same amount of dollars for your commercials as the big broadcasters get.)

However, Turner’s research also sometimes highlights other interesting viewing trends. According to the report, the average number of hours a typical viewer spent watching TV in 2011 was 34.2 (I know, who are these people, and where do they get the time?). The figure was 34.0 hours in 2010 and 32.3 hours in 2006. This despite the rise of on-demand services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), HBO Go and Hulu, and the emergence of new devices to watch that content on, from tablets to gaming consoles.

Other findings:

—While live viewing has slowly been declining over the last five years – down from an average of 32 hours a week in 2006 to 31.7 hours in 2011—time-shifted viewing has risen from just 0.4 hours five years ago to 2.5 hours last year.

—Since 2006, average weekly viewership of the Big Four broadcast networks has slipped from 9.4 hours per week to 7.8 hours, while ad-supported cable watching has increased from an average of 15.6 hours per week five years ago to 17 hours last year.

—Viewership of “other” programming—premium cable channels, Spanish language networks, etc.—increased from an average of 7.4 weekly hours to 9.3 hours over the five-year span.

Over 45 percent of TV viewers used digital video recorders last year, up from 24 percent in 2007, Turner reports. DVR viewing is having a particularly profound influence on cable ratings.

USA Network caper drama Covert Affairs, for example, drew, on average, 61 percent of its total “Live+ 7” audience from time-shifted viewing in the seven days after it aired.

Turner, meanwhile, noted that usage of its content through its various Turner Digital online destinations – which includes everything from the Cartoon Network to CNN—was up 9 percent last year to 93 million unique users, according to comScore.

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Speaking at an investor event conducted by parent company Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA) in November—just after Starz announced that its agreement with Netflix would end in February—Chris Albrecht, the pay network’s CEO, said an “authentication app” similar to HBO Go would be announced sometime in 2012.

A Starz representative would not comment regarding a timeline for the release of such a product, which would allow Starz subscribers to view the network’s shows on any device by logging in with a username and password registered with the video provider.

With its Netflix deal to stream archival Starz original series episodes and licensed movies due to end next month, Starz—the third biggest pay-cable provider—now finds itself playing catch-up in the technological race it began.

While many expected Starz to make an announcement at CES this week, it was Showtime that stepped up and answered HBO’s volley, touting a new iPad application that allows its subscribers at participating distributors to watch more than 400 hours of the network’s programming on their tablets.

Showtime officials said the app will be in the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes store sometime in early 2012, with access for subscribers of AT&T’s U-Verse and Verizon’s FiOS carrier services. Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) subscribers, meanwhile, will get Showtime Anytime through the carrier’s Xfinity TV service. The network says more distribution deals are in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, HBO Go—and its Cinemax-based Max Go sibling—are rolling out now on Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) system. And with that, Go is now available to 98 percent of the pay network’s subscribers. Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) will be the last MSO to launch the Go service, and that should happen sometime in the first quarter, an HBO rep told paidContent Wednesday.

That leaves Starz, traditionally one of the more innovative networks in regard to on-demand technologies.

Predating its arrangement with Netflix, Starz had established Vongo, a movie-rental download service that at one point offered more than 1,500 titles for an additional subscription fee. Although Vongo no longer exists, Starz still supports online downloads of its content through carriers including Verizon FiOS, *AT&T* U-Verse and Comcast Xfinity.

Starz was also the first premium cable provider to participate in Comcast’s on-demand trials in 2009, making more than 300 movies and a number of original series available to the 5,000 subscribers in the trial.

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UltraViolet, which went “live” last month, is the new digital locker scheme—backed by Hollywood studios including Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX), Universal, Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Paramount (NYSE: VIA)—that lets buyers of physical media also own a cloud-based digital version for no extra cost. The initiative is intended to curtail a rental and streaming trend among movie consumers, and re-kindle a demand for good old-fashioned disc ownership, with home entertainment revenue falling every year since 2004.

Samsung’s new players will support the new “disc to digital” feature that allows owners to authenticate their existing DVD and Blu-ray titles and store digital versions of them that can be played on devices like laptops, tablets and smart phones – for an extra “nominal” fee.

This authentication plan was concurrently announced at CES by Samsung and the technology’s developers, Rovi and Flixter, the latter of which is owned by Warner Bros. The feature will begin showing up in other home entertainment devices from other manufacturers in 2012.

UltraViolet is in its early stages, but Warner, for example, has already published several Blu-ray titles, Horrible Bosses and the Green Lantern, that include digital-locker versions that a purchaser can share with up to six members of their family. DECE, the consortium of consumer electronics companies that created Ultraviolet, says that about 750,000 people have signed up for accounts so far. It claims that consumers are 47 percent more likely to buy rather than rent an Ultraviolet-supportive disc.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a number of early adopters are having compatibility issues with the new technology, with necessary UltraViolet software downloads not compatible with the player software they use on their devices, for example.

Addressing those issues to reporters at CES Tuesday, Mitch Singer, Sony Pictures chief technology officer, said, “The best way to describe the launch is we built this great house, it had an incredible foundation, and in our excitement to move in there was some finished carpentry that still needed to be done.”

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Discovery has also made four promotions: David Leavy is now chief communications officer and senior EVP of corporate marketing and affairs, reporting to President and CEO David Zaslav. Bruce Campbell, chief development officer and general counsel, adds business affairs and global production management to his responsibilities. Chief Digital Officer JB Perrette adds oversight of Discovery’s enterprise operational services to his portfolio, while EVP and Chief Content Officer for Discovery Networks International Luis Silberwasser adds U.S. network Velocity to his responsibilities.

—Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Publishing: Tim Ditlow has been appointed associate publisher for Amazon’s Marshall Cavendish children’s book titles. According to Publishers Weekly, that title “may be misleading, since the rep acknowledged that Ditlow will be overseeing children’s and YA books beyond the more than 400 titles that Amazon recently acquired from Marshall Cavendish.” Ditlow was VP of children’s content at the Amazon-owned Brilliance Audio, and before that was VP, publisher at Random House’s Listening Library.

—Turner Broadcasting: Greg D’Alba has been appointed to the new role of president of news and Turner Digital ad sales, leading the TBS, Inc. ad sales organization. Most recently, D’Alba served as EVP and COO for CNN ad sales, marketing and operations. Donna Speciale joins as president of Turner Entertainment and Animation ad sales. Currently she holds the title of president of investment and activation and agency operations for MediaVest USA.

The reorg sees several promotions: Walker Jacobs is now EVP of digital ad sales, and Katrina Cukaj is now EVP of CNN ad sales, both reporting to D’Alba. Frank Sgrizzi has been upped to EVP of Turner Entertainment ad sales, Joe Hogan is EVP of truTV, Cartoon and Adult Swim ad sales, and Lenny Daniels adds Turner Sports ad sales to his list of responsibilities including programming, production and strategy operations. Sgrizzi, Hogan and Daniels report to Speciale.

—MediaBrix: Manny Berrios and Sandro Camarao join in new positions at the company: CTO and VP of product management, respectively. Previously, Berrios co-founded and was chief technology evangelist at Axle Digital. Camarao most recently was VP at Kenzan Media.

The promotion will run through March 9. The NYT’s Media Decoder, which announced the news ahead of the official Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) announcements (here and here), reports:

The Nook edition of People is $9.99 a month; with a one-year subscription, customers will receive a Nook Tablet, a color device with a 7-inch display, for $199, a discount from its regular price of $249. Customers who buy a one-year subscription for the Nook edition of The New York Times for $19.99 a month, which includes access to NYTimes.com (NYSE: NYT), will receive a black-and-white Nook Simple Touch free or a Nook Color for $99.

The Nook Tablet is discounted by only $50, but that brings it down to the price of the Kindle Fire. The Nook Color is heavily discounted, by $100. The Nook Simple Touch is normally $99. The total cost of a one-year People subscription on Nook is $119.88, and the total cost of a one-year NYT subscription on Nook is $239.88.

Barnes & Noble announced last week that it may spin off its Nook business, though CEO William Lynch said in a CNBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) interview that B&N stores and Nook would “continue to have a very symbiotic relationship.” This promotion is intended to showcase Nook Newsstand, which Barnes & Noble sees as one of the fastest growing parts of the Nook business.

More significantly, the promotion opens the door for other retailers—ahem, Amazon—to start offering free or discounted e-readers or tablets with content subscriptions. Nothing was preventing Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) from doing that before, of course, but I would not be surprised to see it respond now with an offer of its own for Kindle Fire Newsstand subscribers.

It is our understanding that Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and Barnes & Noble are sharing the cost of the discounted Nook Tablet that comes with the Nook People subscription. The New York Times says it is “not divulging terms of our agreement with Barnes and Noble.”

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The changes are unrelated. One is a sort of “take that, Reed Hastings” aimed at the bottom line: HBO will no longer sell DVDs to Netflix, instead forcing the company to buy them at retail or drop them. In a no-brainer, Netflix will shop at retail for DVDs and Blu-Ray discs rather than disappoint subscribers. How much this will affect that bottom line is unclear but it is making a public splash. (Greg Sandoval reported the HBO policy change first.)

The other change will be a little more apparent to subscribers but goes beyond Netflix. According to sources familiar with the plans, Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster (NSDQ: DISH) have agreed to Warner Bros.’ plans to double their current 28-day DVD window. The studio, which has signed on with the DECE UltraViolet Alliance to provide day-and-date release for UV digital libraries, is moving to a 56-day window for rental and subscription DVDs.

The announcement, set for early next week at CES, sets in motion plans Warner Bros. has had in mind for some time. Unlike HBO, my understanding is that Warner Bros. will continue to provide pricing incentives as long as Netflix sticks with the 56-day agreement. That fits with statements Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made when the original 28-day deal was struck two years ago: delays were ok as long as the price was right. A Warner Bros. spokesman declined to comment “on speculation.”

But that 2010 deal also included enhanced streaming rights for back titles and direct-to-video. This deal doesn’t help the streaming side at all—unless you stretch to consider that it might make original programming like the upcoming Netflix Lillyhammer series more appealing.

For the studio, the overall goal is to make buying DVDs—or paying retail DVD prices—for new releases more appealing. Put another way, the studio is trying to wring every last dime out of the DVD business before it disappears while transitioning users to digital sales. A lot of people are willing to wait a month for a new release to show up as a DVD rental; the hope is that two months is too long.

The unrelated changes at HBO and Warner Bros. highlight the complexities faced by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. Netflix and HBO are competing for content, attention and premium dollars, while other parts of Time Warner, like Warner Bros., need Netflix either as a partner or a bidder on streaming rights.

One example: Netflix recently signed a major streaming deal with Warner Bros. and partner CBS (NYSE: CBS) that could be worth $1 billion for programming from The CW. Yes, Netflix needs the programming but Hastings has shown a willingness to drop out of negotiations when he doesn’t see a payoff. Witness the Starz deal coming to an end next month.

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Not too long ago, TV Everywhere was a bold concept being evangelized by Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes: subscribers would pay once for programming on cable or satellite, then have access to that content across platforms and devices. It provided a potential solution for multichannel operators frustrated by programmers sharing their content for free digitally with consumers directly and for programmers looking for leverage with digital rights and access, and could be a valuable anti-cord cutting tool.

Bewkes offered Time Warner’s own premium HBO, available only as pay TV through cable, satellite or telecom, as an example of how it would work. Subscribers who paid for HBO on, say, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), would have access to HBO Go via authentication. It worked beautifully, offering instant online subscription video on demand (SVOD) of current shows, The Sopranos, The Wire and more while expanding the potential value for subscribers by untethering it from the TV. The catch?

Subscribers have no control over access. It only worked as long as Time Warner and Comcast or other pay TV distributors could agree on terms. It took two years for HBO to be available to the bulk of its pay TV subs via authentication on computer or portable devices; major holdouts Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) only signed on as 2011 came to a close. That came after TWC and Cablevision added a twist—asserting that the channels they traditionally provided through TV could be available on any screen through an in-house network.

Pay TV isn’t alone. On the video side, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Hulu, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes and others expanded from computer access to over-the-top boxes, gaming consoles like Xbox, tablets and smartphones—and through some of those or connected TVs, to TV sets. At Conde Nast, Time Inc. and some other magazine publishers, print and digital only-only subs get full access for one subscription. The New York Times offers options at different costs for different kinds of digital access but home delivery customers get it all included; other newspapers have their own variations.

It’s not exactly the content nirvana offered up by Qwest in its prescient ads about being able to offer every movie, book or musical performance ever produced to a customer at an off-the-beaten-path cafe or a middle-of-nowhere motel (as long as the business had an efficient broadband provider). But it is the beginning of a new age of ubiquity for people willing to pay for content—and scarcity for people who don’t pay directly.

Yes, it sounds a little off base to describe anything digital in terms of scarcity. The usual argument against charging for access is the consumer can get news, info and entertainment from a lot of sources and will turn to those rather than pay a fee. It’s a fair argument and one that rings true in a lot of cases, enabled for years by a traditional media strategy that untethered the print-video dual revenue stream of subscription/licensing and advertising for online distribution and by new digital-only ad-supported outlets. The expectation created was this kind of content would or should be free online. Most of today’s pay efforts are based on balancing that consumer expectation with the reality that online advertising alone can’t replace the disappearing dollars on the traditional side.

We are looking at a different kind of ubiquity and scarcity in digital content today, one that operates almost like pay TV and broadcast. Pay and you get access. Want it for free? Access may be delayed and some content won’t be available at all. Through last season, if you wanted to watch Glee after it aired on Fox (NSDQ: NWS)—a broadcast network—the new episode was online in 24 hours at Hulu or Fox and usually the five most recently aired episodes were available. Starting with the 2011-12 season, unless you subscribe to Hulu Plus or a multichannel provider that has a deal with Fox, you have to wait 8 days. By the way, the only way to get Hulu anywhere but a computer is to subscribe to Hulu Plus for $7.99 a month; basic Hulu is online only.

It also creates some of the same barriers as premium and pay TV. Some were in on Sex and the City or The Sopranos from the beginning; others didn’t meet Carrie or Tony til syndication. For the past few years, some of those barriers have been lowered as networks experimented with digital access. Now they’re going back up. Expect more networks to follow the Fox approach.

The app explosion opened new options. Papers like The Guardian that espoused free online access were willing to charge for app downloads and now, for app subscriptions. Apps became a new revenue stream—potential for some, very real for others—and added a new quandary. Should subscribers have access across every new platform and device for one fee or pay separately?

That’s particularly important when you consider that the cost of developing and deploying new apps can run into serious money for some publishers. Distribution has costs, too. Publishers who want to take advantage of the built-in sales base for iTunes and others have to pay for it with a share of the fee, usually 30 percent. They also give up some or all control over the customer relationship unless the subscription comes through the publisher outside of the app.

News Corp.‘s tablet tabloid The Daily went for browser scarcity, charging for full access via iPad app. The same company’s New York Post blocks browser access on the iPad, requiring a paid app, but is open online for now. The Post is trying to keep apps as a separate pay space; its 52-week $273 “digital bundle” includes only the print subscription and the replica e-edition. (App subs get the first 30 days for $1.99, then it’s $9.99 a month or $99 a year.) The New York Times now includes full online access with subscriptions to its Kindle and Nook editions but its digital subscription access doesn’t include the Kindle newsstand, which is operated by Amazon. Freemium Spotify is only free online; the premium part covers mobile access.

The Boston Globe solved a lot of this in one fell swoop by designing its new subscription-only bostonglobe.com with HTML5, rendering it easy to read in any browser on any device. Boston.com is still free but gaining access to the full print and online content from the Globe takes a subscription to the new site.

There’s not an easy answer, especially when “everything everywhere” is a mantra.

As a subscription addict, I’m all for ubiquitous access. More than that, I expect it—and as a traveler who uses a mix of ways to read and watch, I need it. I’ve been separated from my home video subscriptions for 10 weeks now (broken Slingbox connection doesn’t help) and paying for a lot that I literally can’t see is frustrating. I know I’m an extreme case, though, both in my willingness to pay for multiple subscriptions and in my access requirements. I look to family and friends who are far less extreme though and I see a growing expectation that access to content, especially the kind you pay for, will be ubiquitous.

That doesn’t discount new platforms and devices as revenue streams. Each opens new opportunities for subscribtions or for one-off sales/rentals.streams/downloads. That does’t make it cost effective for every publisher to develop something new and device-centric, which either means doing without or accepting that some access will come at the expense of creativity. In the old days we called that shovelware; today’s more sophisticated development environment offers some better options.

In an iPad tablet world, it was easier to put off some of these decisions. But despite iPad’s continued dominance, choice is increasing as is Android’s market share. Millions of Kindle Fires are in use now plus Nook tablets, Samsung Galaxy, and more. Each OS has its issues but content publishers and creators have one that overrides them all: the need not to be left behind when a consumer switches devices.

That’s where “pay once, get it anywhere” should pay off.

Read the rest of the posts in our Coming in 2012 archives.

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Earlier this week, Netflix and the BBC announced that the service would feature several, but not necessarily all, popular programs from the broadcaster. The BBC would push episodes from current shows like Top Gear, but only six months after the programs were broadcast on the BBC itself. Other shows, like Fawlty Towers, are no longer in production and will probably see more flexible terms for the content.

Now it’s being reported that a deal with the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, ITV (LSE: ITV), may not include episodes of some of its most popular shows, such as the costume drama Downton Abbey, penned by Academy Award-winner Julian Fellowes. (To be clear, no deal between the two has been announced yet.)

An article in Bloomberg cites sources that paint a challenging picture for Netflix, whose entry into Europe comes as local broadcasters are establishing their own streaming services as a way of shoring up their traditional TV businesses.

These broadcasters will want to promote their own services first before passing their top content to third parties like Netflix. The pay TV market in Europe is currently worth some $76 billion, and PwC says it will grow to $95 billion in the next four years—although Netflix has not yet announced plans to offer content in other European markets beyond its launch for the UK and Ireland.

In addition to the BBC, Netflix has signed deals with MGM, Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) and Miramax for films. Amazon-owned Lovefilm has managed to wrest Sony (NYSE: SNE) away for itself with its own exclusive deal.

In truth, it seems that Netflix’s dealings with European broadcasters are a very mixed bag. Beyond the BBC and possibly ITV, Mediaset in Italy seems open to collaboration, while RTL seems to only be interested if it can sell ads alongside whatever content it licenses.

That makes Europe not unlike Netflix’s situation in the U.S., where it looks like it will lose access to content from Starz and does not carry any from Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner’s TBS, but has forged deals with many of the main broadcasters for selected content.

Bloomberg reports that the company lost some 800,000 customers when it changed its pricing this year, but as of September still had 23.8 million subscribers and remains the biggest paid streaming property in the U.S. At peak times, Netflix can apparently account for 25 percent of all internet traffic in the U.S., according to network management firm Sandvine, cited by Bloomberg.

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly referred to an article from Reuters; (NYSE: TRI) it was from Bloomberg.

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In a complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan, luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton accused Warner Bros of ignoring its instructions not to use a fake handbag in an airport scene in the Hangover II. In the scene, Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis) carries luggage marked LVM and warns another character “Careful, that is.. that is a Louis Vuitton.”

According to the complaint, the item in question is not in fact a Louis Vuitton but was instead made by a Chinese American firm called Diophy. Louis Vuitton is currently suing Diophy before the International Trade Commission in the hopes of getting its knock-off products banned from the United States.

Louis Vuitton says that Alan’s “Careful, that’s a Louis Vuitton” line been become a popular catchphrase and that the movie has produced consumer confusion. Its lawsuit also claims that there has been gossip and Internet buzz about whether or not Alan’s bag is real. Louis Vuitton has long been an obsession of sorts with certain celebrities and fashionistas.

You can see a shot of Alan and his “Louis Vuitton” luggage here at the Clothes On Film blog.

The luxury brand also claims that Warner Bros caused further harm by refusing to edit the bag scene before it released the movie on DVD.

This is not the first time that the studio has been tangled up in intellectual property issues with Hangover II. In June, it settled a copyright suit brought by a tattoo artist who claimed that it had used a Mike Tyson body design without permission.

If the Louis Vuitton allegations are true, they may prove a huge embarrassment for Warner Bros which has been part of a full-court press in Washington this month to pass a controversial law called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act).

The handbag maker is asking the court to grant an order to destroy all copies of the Hangover II and promotional materials that contain the airport scene with the fake bag. Louis Vuitton also wants profits from the film and triple damages.

It’s possible, of course, that the lawsuit is simply a publicity stunt to draw attention to piracy. If so, it’s working.

Louis Vuitton v Warner Bros

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Bloomberg reported that Verizon will have to further explain its deals with Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), Bright House Networks, and Cox for wireless spectrum in exchange for resale agreements and billions in cash. Bloomberg quoted a representative of the Consumer Federation of America saying that the deal “is diminishing competition in every way,” but also published the views of a telecom policy analyst who expects the DOJ and Federal Communications Commission to eventually let this deal pass.

Perhaps turnabout is only fair play for Verizon, currently chuckling over the failure of rival AT&T’s bid to purchase T-Mobile and become the leading wireless company in the U.S. But Verizon’s approach to acquire more spectrum—everybody wants more spectrum—is quite different from AT&T’s, considering that Verizon’s moves don’t eliminate any serious consumer wireless companies from the market.

Cox had already decided to get out of the wireless business, and fewer and fewer people are interested in buying wireless service from a cable company that don’t have access to smartphones. Verizon may have to sell off portions of its spectrum assets in certain markets, but it seems like any restrictions would be far less strict than what the government was likely to require from AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile.

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The funding underscores how, while Twitter is slowly turning its attention to generating revenue on its social-media platform through advertising and marketing services, it is also still very much picking up huge injections of cash for faster growth.

It also raises the question of whether Twitter may put off thoughts of an IPO for the time being: this latest investment values the company at $10 billion, according to Jack Neele, a fund manager at Robeco Groep NV (via Bloomberg).

The deal follows an $800 million investment taken earlier this year by the Russian group Digital Sky Technologies (DST), and take Twitter’s total investments to just under $1.5 billion.

Not a fly-by-night prince: Kingdom Holdings, in a press release, noted that the deal was the result of several months of negotiations and due diligence on the part of the company.

It could signal a change in strategy for the company, which might be eyeing up other social media brands for further investments. Up to now, it has focused on some key stakes in regional operations, as well as some of the biggest, most established international media and tech properties:

—The company has invested $600 million in shares of News Corporation. Those shares include voting rights and the prince was the subject of some media attention earlier this year when we spoke out in support of the Murdochs during the height of the phone-hacking scandal. That investment has been used as a route to growing out News Corp.‘s footprint in the Arabic world.

—Kingdom Holdings and the Prince also have a stake of Time Warner: that came by way of its initial investment of $145 million in Netscape, which subsequently got bought by AOL (NYSE: AOL). The company made further, unspecified investments in Time Warner in subsequent years, and according to its site, has a similar strategy to the one it has taken with News Corp., to partner with Time Warner on regional investments in the Middle East.

—It also, very presciently, acquired five percent of Apple back in 1997, a steal for $115 million. It’s unclear if that stake has increased or decreased but it seems more of a straight rather than strategic investment.

—Other stakes that it has held include those in Motorola (NYSE: MMI), eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) and HP (NYSE: HPQ).

—Regionally, it has a 29.9 percent stake in the publishers Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), and Rotana Group, a broadcasting JV with News Corp. The Prince also has plans to launch his own Arab news channel, Alarab.

Given Kingdom Holdings’ emphasis on building out regional operations based on strategic stakes, this could kick off an interesting chapter in the international growth of Twitter.

Twitter had already marked itself out during the “Arab spring” revolts as a key route for communicating not only among people on the ground, but also for communicating developments to the outside world.

Twitter’s platform, in its simplest form of exchanging short messages with a group of followers, is highly scalable, working not only on the web and smartphones but on the most basic of mobile handsets. That gives it a lot of potential in developing markets, as well as those that are more advanced.

The company has also said that it will not extend a trial it had been running with DirectTV since last year—although this will not be because of the agreement that it signed with Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and Bright House Networks and is now awaiting approval from regulators.

The cable deal will not only give Verizon a significant lift in wireless spectrum assets—SpectrumCo, the cable JV, will be handing over 122 spectrum licenses for advanced wireless services, which cover 259 million POPs—but it will also allow the carrier the chance to bundle its wireless services with pay-TV operations that extend far beyond the current footprint of the company’s FiOS fiber-optic network.

At the UBS Media and Communications Conference this week, McAdam noted that as a result of this, it would no longer have a need to aim for a costly build out fiber-optic connection into all homes after it reaches a target of about 18 million. “We are going to build out what we said and not any more,” he told the conference (via transcript on Verizon’s site).

Meanwhile, the company also looks to be ending another venture, but it is apparently unconnected to the cable deal: the company is concluding a trial that it started last year with DirectTV offering TV, satellite and broadband access via an LTE receiver on the satellite dish. “The trials are done because the trials were scheduled to be done. This is not linked in any way at all,” a spokesperson told FierceWireless today. 

McAdam played down the idea of how, exactly, it would push innovation on its FiOS service while at the same time reselling services from its competitors:

“This obviously, as you can imagine, was the topic of deep discussion with Comcast and Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner,” he told the audience at the UBS conference. “The theory is, though, that all boats will rise, so FiOS will not be disadvantaged in any way. If I put my Verizon hat on, we think that the FiOS platform is the strongest platform and each partner can take the core product and do some innovation on top of that if they choose to…FiOS will have a bunch of very good products that will come that, frankly—and come faster than it would have come if we tried to do it on our own.”

Verizon has been the subject of speculation this week over whether it would be launching a streamed service that would compete with the likes of Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX). Some have suggested that it could partner with Netflix competitor Redbox on the project.

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The proportion of UK consumers who used Facebook for video in the last year rose from zero to 29 percent, according to new Oliver & Ohlbaum research *…

But a majority (35.1 percent) of users use Facebook for content discovery, ahead of 22.2 percent who use it as a source of content.

Miramax, Warner Bros. and BBC Worldwide have been amongst those to make their premium content available on Facebook directly.

• TV: Still, the percentage going of users visiting broadcasters’ own video sites has not grown in the last year, O&O says.
• Movies: Only 0.9 percent of users use Facebook for Hollywood movies.

O&O’s findings are not too surprising. Premium video initiatives on Facebook are relatively new, whereas UK broadcasters own the online catch-up TV space and several aggregator brands already dominate online movies. Facebook is used far more for user-generated content, O&O found…

Indeed, YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) recently said that 300 years, or 2.6 million hours, of YouTube video are watched on Facebook every day.

Meanwhile, another bit of research could explain a bit more about why longer-form video is not being watched as much yet on Facebook…

Ofcom reported in October that in the UK young adults use Facebook on mobile more than they do on PCs, and this shift to mobile meant there was less browsing time spent on the social network.

Facebook is huge, used by nearly 70 percent of European adults each month, according to new comScore data. In the UK, that is actually above 80 percent.

* The jump may also be explained because, in 2010, O&O gave survey respondents the option of writing in “Facebook” whilst, in 2011, it explicitly listed “Facebook” as a survey option.

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Bewkes sought to play down the threat posed by so-called ‘cord cutters’ to the lucrative cable business by saying that only a small number of low-income people were ceasing to pay for tv. In his view, any drop in cable subscribers is attributable to the economy and is not due to “some kind of distribution change.” Such distribution changes would presumably include services like Netflix which some cord cutters are using as a partial alternative to cable or satellite.

A year ago, the Time Warner CEO famously belittled the would-be upstart as “the Albanian army” and then this week reflected on Netflix’s recent stumbles by telling the Financial Times, “It can do certain things and not other things. It can fly, it’s not a submarine. Don’t turn a hamburger into a cow.”

At today’s gathering, Bewkes did, however, acknowledge that the price of cable packages are beginning to strain consumers and added that the squeeze stems in no small part from the price of sports channels. He suggested that hefty fees like those charged by ESPN (NYSE: DIS) are resembling a tax on subscribers but said that Time Warner has the right amount of sports in its current programming mix. The company appears to be sitting out a recent bidding frenzy for slices of the NFL and is instead looking forward to using the end of the NBA strike to showcase its new basketball offerings.

On the more fundamental question of how Time Warner plans to keep making money from its cable offerings, Bewkes was candid.

“The monetization strategy is simple. It’s the one we all love and the one we’ve used for years,” he said, explaining that carriage fees and a broad subscription base would continue to be the enormous driver of profits that they have been for years.

Time Warner is also enjoying a rebound in other parts of its business empire, including CNN which is profitable and has increased ratings after an abysmal 2010. As for publishing, Bewkes noted that its flagship magazine, Time, was named ‘hottest in its category’ by AdWeek and that magazines have not suffered in the way that newspapers have. But he was also vague about the company’s digital strategy, only noting that tablets allowed publications like Sports Illustrated to show a “more powerful version of their pictures.” Time Warner just appointed digital advertising veteran Lara Lang to lead its magazine division which has been slow out of the gate to exploit opportunities like the iPad.

Audience members asked what Time Warner was going to do to juice its flagging channels, TNT and TBS, and improve sales of its video games. Bewkes acknowledged that numbers in these areas were weak but said he saw promise in the success of the show The Big Bang and the value of games like the Midway franchise.

In coming years, Time Warner can also look forward to cash cows like the Harry Potter and Dark Knight franchises helping it retool the flagging parts of its operations.

Bewkes was speaking at the 39th annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.

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One thing Lang will probably not be doing is any wholesale rearranging of Time Inc.‘s departments. Griffin sparked a mini-revolt among Time Inc. top executives by shifting executives and altering roles as he attempted to remake Time Inc.‘s operations. That had a number of Time Inc’s top employees threatening to head for the door  if Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes didn’t put a stop to it.

I have heard some conflicting things about what Lang and Bewkes talked about regarding what went wrong during Griffin’s truncated reign, but the word is that Bewkes has not specifically ordered Lang to refrain from making any major personnel moves or department restructuring for at least six months. “Jeff is not a micro-manager,” said one source close to the CEO.

The CDO: Not all of Griffin’s structural shifts were met with opposition. Griffin’s hiring of the well-liked and respected Interactive Advertising Bureau head Randall Rothenberg as Time Inc.‘s chief digital officer was generally welcomed at the company, though many executives did question the need for such a position. Generally speaking, the feeling at Time Inc. was, well, if we have to have a CDO, at least it’s someone of Rothenberg’s expertise and stature.

As CDO, Rothenberg was charged with overseeing Time Inc.‘s strategy across the magazine’s editorial, advertising, content, technology, consumer marketing, legal, research and marketing services. He was also expected to examine potential digital acquisitions and ad-supported and subscription-based digital content.

The problem for someone in that kind of role is that much of the power to do anything at Time Inc. comes from the individual brands, which are divided into three group units: Style & Entertainment (People, Entertainment Weekly, Essence), Lifestyle (Real Simple, Southern Living), and News/Business/Sports (Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated). Basically, if the brands do not report to you, you do not have the authority to make any changes.

The challenge for a CDO—Rothenberg didn’t have much time to implement any real changes, as he returned to the IAB shortly after Griffin’s exit—is how to chart a digital strategy for Time Inc.‘s various (and siloed) magazines and properties.

In the months since Rothenberg left, the responsibility of charting Time Inc.‘s digital strategy has been taken on by a group of senior executives representing the three separate divisions: Mitch Klaif, SVP/chief informational officer; George Linardos, SVP Digital Marketing & Business Development; David Geithner, SVP and Group General Manager (and yes, he’s U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s brother); John Cantarella, president, Digital, News & Sports Group; Mark Golin, Editorial Director, Style, Entertainment and Lifestyle Digital; Fran Hauser, president of Digital for Style & Entertainment; and Chris Peacock, CNNMoney’s EVP/VP.

But they haven’t been able to settle the big decisions around digital, including whether Time Inc. should accept Apple’s terms and sell subscriptions to its digital magazine apps. Although Hearst and Condé Nast have agreed to those terms and have trumpeted large download numbers, Time Inc. execs remain wary.

In contrast to its two major publisher rivals, Time Inc. does not sell subscriptions to its digital replicas. It does offer current print subscribers “all-access” to the corresponding titles they get in the mail. The reason is Apple’s policy of not actively sharing user data. Apple does, however, allow for an “opt-in function,” where publishers ask their digital-only subscribers to voluntarily share personal details such as where they live and their e-mail.

Why is this a problem? Time Inc. has 31 million print subscribers across 21 magazines. Let’s say within five years, half of those readers migrate to digital and away from print. How many digital subscribers volunteer their info? How much marketing and advertising data would Time Inc. lose?

Clearly, other publishers have made their bets. A number of publishers have told me that 70 percent of their digital subscribers have willingly provided their info to them. But there’s no way to verify that, and Time Inc. doesn’t want to wager on what other publishers are telling the press. Time Inc. may eventually try to experiment with a digital subscription for one of its smaller titles, such as Southern Living, though executives are emphatic that there is absolutely nothing in the works at the moment.

With 15 percent of Time Inc.‘s revenues coming from digital—about average for major magazine publishers—Lang will be charged with figuring out ways to quickly grow digital’s share (and no, not by simply absorbing some of print revenue’s shrinking slice of the pie). As the recognized digital head, Lang will have to complete a job of building up the company’s marketing services, something that Griffin started and was also deemed crucial by the Time Inc. rank and file. Griffin formed a standalone “branded solutions” unit, which was modeled on what Griffin achieved at Meredith Corp., a month before he was gone.

It is now an accepted truth among publishers that the migration of readers and advertisers from print to digital—and the resulting diminution of print ad revenues—has forced a maneuvering that erases the traditional line between the roles of a publisher and a marketing agency.

One of the first changes Griffin made when he arrived at Time Inc. was to begin to restructure the company’s consumer marketing unit. At the heart of the changes was the establishment of a Digital Marketing and Business Development group. That was followed by the creation of new roles for Time Inc.‘s refocused sales and marketing teams, with ad executive Stephanie George and Style & Entertainment head Paul Caine expanding their responsibilities.

As an advertiser, Lang knows all about what marketers’ needs are. But her lack of experience dealing directly with consumers could cause her focus to become diffuse as she tries to balance both sides and remake the company in important ways. She cannot afford to underestimate the importance of the consumer side; after all, much of Time Inc.‘s earnings are derived from subscriptions and circulation, not ads (speaking of which, has anyone heard anything new about Maghound, the two-year-old web subscription service?).

Although her appointment caught most of the company’s staffers by surprise, Lang will enter her new role with a healthy supply of goodwill among the Time Inc. community. But she has a long list of issues that will test her management skills and ability to prioritize.

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