UPDATE: Abrams issued
a third memo March 25, briefer and more specific to newspapers.
A hundred days into the Sam Zell era at Tribune and the company is already beginning to unravel.
Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert correctly predicted in December that the new Tribune would be hard-pressed to generate enough cash flow to cover interest payments on the massive debt involved in taking the company private.
Zell
acknowledged as much this week, announcing terrible fourth quarter results, a "strategic review" and the possible sale of assets (beyond the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, already envisioned in the deal).
Whether that includes
Newsday,
as reported several places yesterday and this morning, I don't know.
Newsday has several potential suitors and honest-to-God synergies with Rupert Murdoch's
New York Post and Mort Zuckerman's
Daily News.
Conversely, as
this New York Times article on the matter shrewdly observed, there is a paradox -- an attractive asset like
Newsday, in a prosperous suburban market, is exactly the sort of newspaper you want to still have when times improve. The same can be said for former Tribune papers in Greenwich and Stamford, Conn., two of the richest commuter towns in the nation, which the company quietly dealt away to Hearst last fall.
My bet would be on the sale of the company's minority interest in the Food Network -- a smart investment play by the old regime. Scripps Networks would be happy to haul that back in, even in the current down cycle.
A second and less splashy Tribune item has been the odd debut of
Lee Abrams as the company's new innovation chief. "Please forgive this rambling introduction letter but I am ecstatic with no-bullshit excitement and pride in joining the Tribune Company," Abrams began a
March 13 communique to the troops. True to his word, Abrams unloaded page after page of vague nostrums about change, including the cryptic epigram, "NEWS & INFORMATION IS THE NEW ROCK N ROLL."
Abrams followed with lots more in the same vein in a
March 18 memo. In an example of "gotta throw stuff out there," he brainstormed about taking news broadcast sound "to the next level."
Now, I'm a newspaper guy, but my Poynter television colleagues have already educated me on how morning shows have come to terms with "viewers" stepping into the closet or bathroom while the show is on. Matt, Meredith and company seem to have the sound part down pretty well.
Like recently installed executive vice president
Randy MIchaels, Abrams comes from a radio background. I am a paying customer and admirer of both the technology and programming of XM Radio, his former employer. But I'm skeptical that his expertise and Michaels' success at Clear Channel (notorious for blowing off news at most of its stations) is going to revitalize newspapers or even local television stations.
I suppose this one is literally a case of "stay tuned."
In that vein, I agree with the tack of
Chicago Tribune business columnist Phil Rosenthal in a
piece that ran March 19, the middle of this eventful week at Tribune: The Zell regime is shaping up to be a helluva running story even if the CEO never uses a stronger expression than "Oh, pshaw.
