Time Inc.

Time Inc. is using the resources of sibling America Online to increase lucrative automatic subscription renewals, and the sometimes controversial tactic of continuous service is changing the magazine business-but slowly

``Continuous service is growing gradually. It is not going to transform this business overnight,'' says Jeremy Koch president, Time Consumer Marketing. Mr Koch refused to give exact auto-renewal figures for any of Time Inc.'s titles. still he did say ``the weekly magazines are the furthest ahead.''

Automatic-renewal subscriptions typically begin with a phone solicitation