Time Warner has announced that they’ll be divesting themselves of the substantial stake they have in Time Warner Cable in what Stacy at GigaOm suggests is the beginning of a “Death by 1000 Cuts” where the ailing Time Warner empire will crumble via attrition as they sell themselves off piece by piece.

Although I’d suggest it is far too early to predict their ultimate fate, it would seem that the Time Warner approach is not what you’d expect from a company that wants to ultimately prevail in the media business. TW was one of the few big companies that saw the coming convergence of offline and online media years ago. With a huge Cable Division, AOL, and Motion Pictures many thought Time Warner was poised to be a major player as media convergence brought economies of scale to the companies management, developments, and production equations. Yet almost the opposite has happened for Time Warner. The stock after the AOL merger fell dramatically and has languished for years, and apparently Time Warner is now deciding to try to extract as much value from the empire as possible rather than build for the future, though perhaps they are reasonably assuming that a tight focus will allow them to become a smaller but more profitable venture.

Will this be death by 1000 cuts or a clever corporate redirection?

Only Time … Warner … will tell.