San Francisco  - Time Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate, said Wednesday that it will take a 25-billion-dollar write-down in its fiscal fourth quarter, propelling the company to its first annual loss in six years.

In 2002, Time Warner suffered a record-breaking annual loss of 98.7 billion dollars.

Before Wednesday's announcement the company had expected a 2008 profit of between 1.04 and 1.07 dollars per share.

Time Warner, which owns companies such as HBO, AOL and Warner Bros, said 15 billion dollars of the charges stemmed from a decline in the value of the cable TV franchises owned by Time Warner cable.

The rest of the write-down came from declines in the value of its publishing and internet subsidiaries. The company has also been hard hit by the drop in advertising and the bankruptcy of investment firm Lehman Brothers, which was a major tenant at its flagship Time & Life Building in New York.