The world's second largest media and entertainment conglomerate, Time Warner Inc., has announced plans to sell its majority stake in its cable television arm Time Warner Cable.

This means that the company will focus on content and not actual broadcast infrastructure by spinning off the second largest US operator behind Comcast, which is already a separately traded company since last year. Time Warner has a 84 percent stake in Time Warner Cable.

It is expected that around $4 billion of the proceeds will be returned to shareholders, either through a special dividend or a share buy-back. The total value of Time Warner's share is worth nearly $23 billion.

"We're working hard on an agreement with Time Warner Cable, which we expect to finalize soon," the company said.

The decision appears to be connected to a recent report of a 36 percent decline in first-quarter earnings. Also, the company appears to make preparations from letting go of both AOL's advertising and ISP businesses, by first separating them into two autonomous units.

Incoming CEO Jeff Bewkes said all the steps required to divide AOL's two parts should be completed by the end of the current quarter.

Time Warner Inc. can be traced back to Warner Communications, which was established in 1972 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets. Warner Communications and Time Inc. merged in 1989 to form Time Warner. After AOL purchased Time Warner for $164 billion in 2000, the company was called AOL Time Warner. The "AOL" in the name was however dropped in 2003.