Media giant Time Warner will bring more than 500 jobs over five years to the Tampa area in exchange for $3 million in state and local incentives.
Gov. Rick Scott made the announcement Tuesday from the Capitol accompanied by Time Warner Chief Administrative Officer John Martin.
Any time we can add 500 jobs to the state of Florida, its a great honor, Scott said. This is a major announcement and a breakthrough for the state.
Hillsborough County, because of the available labor pool, was selected for a central services office over 59 cities in the past six months, topping Atlanta as the other finalist.
Im very confident in saying that we are very confident Florida is going to be a great place for us to do business, Martin added.I think the choice we made was pretty unanimous.
Martin said Time Warner is still scouting for a site to set up the office, which will bring in 50 jobs from out of state and create 500 locally.
Many of the jobs willinvolve internal Time Warner administrative matters, such as accounting, with the average pay topping $50,000 a year, Martin said.
While perhaps the shared services center may not have the same degree of glitz and glamour as the Warner Bros. Studio or the CNN Newsroom in Atlanta or New York, Im here to say its no less important to the future success of Time Warner, Martin said.
He envisions a building being up by the end of next year, when the first 100 jobs will be filled.
Time Warner already has a business in Tampa, Time Customer Service, he said.
Scott, who said he hoped to have more announcements of this nature, twice during the announcement joked about his campaign pledge to create 700,000 jobs over seven years.
I just need 1,400 more of these announcements, Scott quipped.
Floridas Agency for Workforce Innovation has reported the state has added 71,000 jobs since the start of the year.
Were adding more than 2,000 jobs a month, so if we can keep doing that, month in and month out, were going to have a great year, Scott said.
New York-based Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) counts among its assets: HBO, New Line Cinema, Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting System, Warner Bros., CNN, and the Cartoon Network Studios.
Contact Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
