J. Richard Munro,93

J. Richard Munro,93

Oversaw the creation of Time Warner

J. Richard Munro, who as chair and CEO of Time Inc. navigated the company from its home in magazine publishing through the stormy media seas of the 1980s and, ultimately, to its momentous purchase of Warner Communications in 1989, creating the world’s largest media corporation, died Aug. 11 in Naples, Florida. He was 93.

His son Mac said the cause of his death, in a hospice, was melanoma.

When Henry R. Luce, the powerful founder of Time Inc., died in 1967, his will stipulated that his company should remain “principally a journalistic enterprise,” with a stable of high-profile magazines — including Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated — and a book-publishing arm.

Things had changed significantly by the time Munro took over as president and CEO in 1980. Time Inc. was in the process of replacing its foundation in journalism and publishing with a more diverse set of media offerings, including HBO, the first major subscription cable channel, which began operating in 1972.

But the transition was not over, and Munro, who promised to serve as president and CEO for a decade, committed himself to completing it, however painful a process it might be.

He restructured Time-Life Books, the company’s publishing division, resulting in a 25% budget cut. He sold the company’s forest products division, which made paper and cardboard boxes.

He tried out a few new magazine titles, including TV-Cable Week, something of a TV Guide for cable television, which had begun to grow in popularity. But they bombed; TV-Cable Week cost Time some $40 million and nearly cost Munro his job.

He survived because he continued to hold the respect of stockholders, employees and Time’s board of directors. But that didn’t solve a bigger problem: Time had long been a relatively small, mission-focused company, and those qualities, in the emerging era of corporate raiders, made it a prime target for a hostile takeover, which would probably see Luce’s creation chopped up and sold for parts.

Munro and his deputies, including Gerald M. Levin, spent two years looking for a merger partner before settling on Warner Communications, run by Steven Ross. The merger, Munro said, would allow the new company, almost completely debt free, to compete with a generation of giant new European media companies while keeping its institutional integrity.

“We won’t have to fire anybody, we don’t have to sell anything and we don’t have to borrow to accomplish this,” he told The New York Times in March 1989, a few years after he added chair to his list of titles. “It gives us a very large treasury — and we have plans to use it.”

But just a few weeks after Munro and Ross announced the merger through a stock swap, Paramount Communications stunned the markets by offering to buy Time at a significant markup.

Munro was livid — “We will strike back,” he told the Times — and scrambled for a response. He and Ross rearranged the deal as a friendly takeover, with Time buying Warner with the help of a large bank loan. The resulting company, now loaded with debt, would be too large a target.

Several Time board members protested, and Paramount sued to stop the deal. Munro outmaneuvered them all.

In July 1989, a few hours after a judge ruled in their favor, Time and Warner moved ahead with the creation of Time Warner, ushering in a new epoch of media conglomerates.

John Richard Munro was born Jan. 26, 1931, in Syracuse, New York. His parents, Donald and Virginia (Danforth) Munro, divorced when he was about 5. His father, a World War I veteran, had been sickened in a German gas attack and never fully recovered. He ran a service station in Camillus, a Syracuse suburb. After the divorce, his mother held a variety of jobs, including selling furniture and tending bar.

After graduating from high school, Munro enlisted in the Marines. He served for two years as a rifle instructor, then spent a year fighting in the Korean War. He received the Purple Heart three times.

He received a bachelor’s degree in English from Colgate University in 1957. He wanted to become a high school principal, and he later did graduate work in education at Teachers College at Columbia University and New York University.

Soon after graduation he took a job with Time Inc. His motivation was mostly financial — he had bills to pay — but he fell in love with the company, and he worked there until he retired.

He worked in ad sales at Time magazine and then at Sports Illustrated, where he climbed the leadership ladder over the course of the 1960s and became publisher in the early ’70s.

He then shifted to the company’s growing video division, which was home to HBO. The subscription-cable service had gotten off to a slow start but it blossomed under Munro, and by the early 1980s Time’s network of cable channels (which also included Cinemax) generated the overwhelming majority of its profits.

Early in his career at Time, Munro met Carol Keeny, the secretary to one of his bosses. They married in 1963.

In addition to their son Mac, she survives him, as do two other sons, John and Doug; six grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; and his brother, Bill.

Munro retired from Time Inc. in 1990 after a decade as CEO and president. He later served on several corporate and nonprofit boards.

He also became deeply involved in volunteer work around Naples, in southwest Florida. He tutored through Head Start, advised on college scholarship selections and mentored students who aspired to attend college.

— The New York Times