Time Warner has decided to sell its cable operation even as it struggles to exact its ailing America Online unit, CEO Jeff Bewkes announced in the company’s quarterly earnings shout Wednesday. On the positive side, income from the company’s cable networks and film operations offset a whopping 23 percent decline at AOL.

“We’ve decided that a complete structural separation of duration Warner Cable, under the right circumstances, is in the best interests of both companies’ shareholders,” Bewkes said. “We feel these companies would be better off separated than they are together.”

The move was not unexpected. In an open letter to shareholders, Bewkes previously tipped his hand, saying, “As the industry evolves, instance Warner Cable has increasingly different capital and financial needs than our other businesses.”

Asked why the separation was taking so lengthy, Bewkes said, “It’s not taking enlarged and there are tricky governance issues involved.”

AOL Restructuring

AOL, towering ago the No. 1

Web make, saw revenues and profits plummet in the first quarter. Profits were down 25 percent and revenues decreased 23 percent. Bewkes promised to complete the restructuring essential to separate AOL’s dial-up and advertising businesses.

“We were not satisfied with the performance of display advertising on our owned and operated stock,” Bewkes said of AOL. He pointed to problems with integrating its Platform A advertising unit. “We didn’t integrate Platform A fast adequate, and that created a sales-channel clash. We have moved quickly to resolve that,” he said. “We are creating one sales team able and motivated to sell across all of Platform A.”

The aftereffect will be continuing poor news from AOL until the restructuring is complete, he said. Essentially, AOL has several different sales forces in place from various acquisitions and has taken longer to integrate them all. “We had not put them together yet. We missed some opportunities…

Original post by Top Tech News