Report says Time Warner reaches deal to sell Atlanta Braves to Liberty Media Corp.

<p>Time Warner Inc. has reached a deal to sell the Atlanta Braves baseball team to Liberty Media Corp. after more than a year of negotiations, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.</p><p>The deal, which must still be approved by Major League Baseball, would involve Time Warner transferring the Braves, a group of craft magazines and $1 billion in cash to Liberty in exchange for about 60 million shares of Time Warner, the Journal reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the deal.</p><p>Based on the closing price of Time Warner's stock Monday, the market value of those shares would be about $1.27 billion.</p><p>Representatives of both Liberty Media and Time Warner declined to comment on the story, which the Journal posted on its Web site late Monday.</p><p>Liberty currently has about 170 million shares of Time Warner, which is equivalent to a stake of about 4 percent of the giant media conglomerate, whose holdings include Time Warner Cable, HBO, AOL, CNN, Warner Bros. and the Time Inc. magazine publishing company. The deal would reduce the size of Liberty's stake in Time Warner to about 2.6 percent.</p><p>Time Warner acquired the Braves when it bought Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting Systems from CNN founder Ted Turner in the mid-1990s.</p>