Following up Jon Friedman's suggestion on Time Inc: If not a sale, how about a diet plan?

-BY SDH We will skip the whole part about how Jeff Bewkes is the new CEO of TimeWarner and the whole story of old media's past. What we will do is chime in on one of our favorite media columnists, Jon Friedman's suggestion that Jeff Bewkes should shake up Time Inc, which we think is right on the money. But perhaps the fact that Time Inc boasts about its size due to the 125 titles it publishes is the very reason the division sucks. Yes there is no excitement; it’s an old media staple that jumped on the digital media wagon a little too late. For this Ann Moore should have been kicked to the curb but her superiors at TimeWarner clearly missed that boat as well. They just launched a corporate website, we're still shocked that this just happened. One of the first things that need to happen at Time Inc is a change at the top. Sure Ann Moore's contract has some time left on it, but pay her to leave and bring in new meat. At the same time, Bewkes should implement a diet plan for the unit, by selling off its less glitzy and, low performing titles trimming the company down to a publisher of about 75-85 publications. Perhaps one of the reasons they held on to so many titles was to keep their status as the biggest. But these days, size doesn't matter. The company needs to also make some strategic acquisitions, scooping up sites they can actually make money from. With all their millions of readers it would make sense to jump into the social networking pool by launching a site for paid magazine subscriber’s only, where they can discuss articles they read in Time Inc's magazines among other things. If Time Inc's senior management is confused about how their digital operation should look, they should look no further than Conde Nast’s CondeNet. Sure Conde has its downs with the whole digital operation allegedly being totally separate from the print operation, but they have a very usable template that Time Inc can use as a foundation to build on. A slimmed down Time Inc with a new leader with the digital DNA, is key to it's future growth. Now the question is whether or not they know that. Related: Why Time Inc. may top Jeff Bewkes' hit list [MarketWatch]