Posted on 11/09/2006 4:39:07 AM PST by abb
Two of the Southland's wealthiest residents made a bid for one of the nation's largest media companies Wednesday in an attempt to restore local ownership of the Los Angeles Times.
Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, who made his fortune in the supermarket industry, submitted an offer for Chicago-based Tribune Co. In addition to The Times, Tribune owns KTLA Channel 5, three dozen other newspapers and television stations and baseball's Chicago Cubs.
The pair would not disclose details of their offer, which was made through companies they control. The bid was "competitive" with at least four offers made for Tribune last week, said a person who was familiar with the proposal but not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Broad and Burkle have repeatedly expressed interest in owning their hometown paper. Their main goal: reestablish local ownership of The Times, which has lost two publishers and two editors in as many years in battles with Tribune over staff cuts.
The company has been under pressure from its shareholders, including the Chandler family of California, to substantially increase its sagging stock price through a sale of all or some of its holdings.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Yep, much like us wanting the DU to be more influential in RAT politics.
The Shift Becomes A Landslide: Newspaper Circulation Plummets
I can't write a post here on declines in newspaper circulation without quoting the New York Times on the one year anniversary of this site. "When it launched, The Huffington Post seemed like a remarkably bad idea."
Yesterday, newspapers all across America reported dramatic declines in circulation, again. Every six months, the subscription numbers are losses compounded on top of losses. Here in Boston, The Boston Globe reported a 6.7% decline in circulation. Virtually every major newspaper around the country reported either modest or severe declines.
The impact of the continued decline in newspaper circulation, and the concurrent decline in evening news readership, should not be underestimated in the political process.
At current rate of declines, by the time of the New Hampshire Democratic Primary in New Hampshire in 2008 for example, Globe circulation will be approximately 325,000 copies in a metro area of ten times that. It will be a full 25% less than what it was in 2004.
Of course, that's not the end of the story. Of the 325,000 copies, it is fair to project that 30% are died-in-the-wool Republicans. When all is said and done, The Boston Globe is reaching a smaller and smaller percentage of the target audience - just over 200,000 copies are headed into Democratic households and hands. Still influential? Absolutely. Still an important part of the mix? Yes. But just a part.
Mainstream Media can thumb its nose at citizen journalists who post on blogs. Joe Klein can dismiss bloggers going to Las Vegas for YearlyKos with a curt "can't we just stop this crap?"
But Joe, why would we? Our traffic is skyrocketing. We can raise awareness, and money. We work together and guess what? What you're writing about next week, I read about last week on mydd.com, or crooksandliars.com or rawstory.com.
The facts are clear. Voter are getting their news from where they want, when they want.
And increasingly, they don't want to read the Globe today.
"Yep, much like us wanting the DU to be more influential in RAT politics."
Same old BS.
Yet while it is easy to recognize this folly when perpetrated by our enemies it is invisible to our friends.
The left wing billionaires, who want to buy these Dinosaur Fishwraps know how the internet and conservative talk radio has wounded the MSM and the fishwraps.
They donated heavily to elect Pelosi and the other rat thugs. Next year, those thugs and their legal thugs, the ACLU will do anything to make FR, conservative blogs and conservative talk radio ineffective.
The left in LA isn't into reading newpapers. LA Times should have taken a stance a little more to the right. Hey LA Times, if you can't get a clue buy one!
"Yet while it is easy to recognize this folly when perpetrated by our enemies it is invisible to our friends."
The answer is simple. They are not our friends nor Republicans.
One way would be to extend the "cannot excerpt" list.
It becomes difficult to point out evidence of photo editing and editorial abuse when you cannot cite the original article.
I wonder if Burkle will use his own money....not
I doubt Clinton will use his own money...8-)
My guess is that Burkle will make a big commission on selling the loser paper to CALPERS and CALSTARS with Yucaipa doing the management and sales.
THE MONEY MAN
...A friend who asked not to be identified said that Soros was so uninterested in money that he often travelled with an empty wallet, forcing friends to loan him cash for cab fare, which he invariably forgot to pay back. Women, the friend said, flocked to him, “because they expect him to leave hundred-dollar bills in their pocketbooks. But he never does.”
We hope sane people will run the USA again before 200,000 people die from a single blast of an improvised nuclear device at any major US city downtown.
California Dreaming? Billionaires' Bid for Tribune Co. Appears Serious
By E&P Staff and The Associated Press
Published: November 09, 2006 10:30 AM ET
NEW YORK Insiders confirmed today that billionaire businessman Eli Broad and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle have indeed teamed up to submit a bid for the Tribune Co. Meanwhile, another mogul, David Geffen, remains interested in making his own bid.
Details of the offer by the two businessmen and their companies were not disclosed, but the Los Angdeles Times reports today that the bid was "competitive" with at least four offers made for Tribune last week, according to a person who was familiar with the proposal.
Broad and Burkle had been expected to bid for the Los Angeles Times, the Tribune's largest property. The joint bid for the entire company came as a surprise.
Broad declined to comment on the report. A call to Burkle's office was not immediately returned.
The Los Angeles Times reports today, "Geffen remains intensely interested in buying the newspaper, associates say, but he believes that Tribune may expect too high a price. The creator of Geffen Records and co-founder of the DreamWorks SKG studio has told these people that he thinks The Times is worth $1.75 billion to $2 billion.
"Broad and Geffen's mutual dislike has been well-known in the city's power circles, and that animosity appears to be fueling a competition over The Times. Each side has questioned the seriousness of the other's attempts to acquire the paper, say those who have spoken to the men independently. Geffen's backers tout his fortune, estimated by Forbes magazine at $4.6 billion, and suggest that a cash purchase would avoid the complications that come with partners and bank loans."
The bid from Burkle and Broad came a day after Chicago-based Tribune Co. replaced Dean Baquet as editor of the Los Angeles Times because he refused to make mandated cost cuts at the paper.
Broad and Burkle have long said they would be interested in returning the Times to local ownership.
Tribune Co. spokesman Gary Weitman declined to comment on the bid.
The Wall Street Journal reports today: "Tribune was expected to continue discussions with private-equity groups interested in the entire company even as it considered offers for individual assets. People familiar with the process said last week that soliciting offers for specific properties may be a way to flush out higher prices from the private-equity bidders."
Tribune's holdings include 11 daily newspapers, 25 TV stations, the Chicago Cubs baseball team, Internet ventures and sizable stakes in the Food Network and the online classified advertising venture CareerBuilder.
Along with the Times and the Chicago Tribune, the company owns Newsday in New York, The Baltimore Sun, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.
Tribune tried selling the company after being pressured by discontented shareholders amid plunging circulation and a decrease in advertising revenue at its newspapers.
When bids for the mammoth media company came in far lower than expected, Tribune told prospective bidders that individual pieces were available for sale.
No major media groups bid for Tribune in the last round. Instead, the company received nonbinding preliminary offers from three investor groups.
One group consisted of Fort Worth, Texas-based Texas Pacific Group and Boston-based Thomas H. Lee Partners.
Other bids came from Boston-based Bain Capital and an alliance made up of Chicago's Madison Dearborn Partners, New York-based Apollo Management and Rhode Island-based Providence Equity Partners.
Wall Street has had difficulty gauging the value of Tribune Co., in part because of all the uncertainties surrounding its media assets during a turbulent time for the industry.
Analyst Edward Atorino of the Benchmark Co. thinks the company could fetch about $40 a share, or roughly 25 percent above where it was trading Wednesday.
Including its more than $5 billion in debt, that would mean a price of about $15 billion.
"It's certainly worth that, but whether they get it is something else," Atorino said. "This is going to be a long endgame. We'll see how it plays out."
Shares of Tribune rose 86 cents, or 2.7 percent, to close at $32.48 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Earlier this year, McClatchy Co. paid $4 billion in cash and stock for Knight Ridder Inc., the newspaper publisher that, like Tribune, ran into trouble with investors over a slumping stock price.
Returning the Times to local ownership won't necessarily secure jobs or lead to increased investment.
Wednesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer replaced its editor, as the private group that bought the paper from McClatchy in June said falling circulation and ad revenue would mean deep newsroom cuts.
Philadelphia Media Holdings initially said it wanted to invest
E&P Staff and The Associated Press
Links referenced within this article
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003379989
The left learns slow---but now they are taking the lessons they learned from the right and cloning themselves.
The Dims were going over election results with a fine-tooth comb and refashioned themselves convincingly.
Democrats saw the GOP was winning Christian votes bigtime. They knew GWB openly courted Catholics on the pro-life issue, and had won this historic Dem consituency away from them. Dims even issued a white paper on this development. They were determined to get those voters back.
Stupidly, Mehllman and other architects of Tuesday's complete defeat apparently never saw, or planned for, the blue wave that was dropped on Repubs. What did Mehlman think he was supposed to be doing as RNC chair? The GOP was remiss in not being alert to---and not alerting the base to---this devilish plan of the Dums.
Soros travels with no money in his wallet on purpose.
He is another "gifter."
He expects us to pick up his trash, cab fare... for free.
MILHOUS POSTED: For all his supposedly fabulous wealth Soros apparently knows how to pinch a penny too:
THE MONEY MAN
...A friend who asked not to be identified said that Soros was so uninterested in money that he often travelled with an empty wallet, forcing friends to loan him cash for cab fare, which he invariably forgot to pay back. Women, the friend said, flocked to him, “because they expect him to leave hundred-dollar bills in their pocketbooks. But he never does.”
Republicans better get it together, and stay ahead of this game.
When they start messing with the internet we will have to go on a wild rampage Dave!!
Get ready for to rampage.
As the elite big money brokers buy out the failing fishwraps and local tv stations, they will target the internet via state and national politicians, they have bought.
Yes, we are going to have a fight on our hands, for sure!
Heading out to grocery shop, gotta eat!
My problem is I don't need any added incentive to eat.
However, my bride of 45 years had to go into braces to prevent some serious future dental and jaw problems. That has impacted our diets and meal planning. Nothing cripsy or crumpy anymore, it has to be soft and mushible.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.