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Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban Submits Application to Buy Chicago Cubs CHICAGO (AP) -- Add internet billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to the list of potential Chicago Cubs buyers. "I submitted an app," Cuban said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Interested parties must submit an application to Major League Baseball to examine the team's finances. Cuban told the Chicago Tribune he sent in the application last week, although he wasn't sure of the date. Tribune Co., which owns the team, announced in April it was selling itself for $8.2 billion to Chicago real estate mogul Sam...

Tribune's revenue down 11.1% in May June 20, 2007 (AP) — Media conglomerate Tribune Co. said Wednesday its revenue fell 11.1 percent in May as advertising declined in both print and broadcast segments. The company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and 23 television stations, said consolidated revenue for the period ended May 27 dropped to $406 million from $457 million in the prior year. Publishing revenue fell 10.3 percent to $292 million from $325 million last year, as advertising revenue fell 11.8 percent to $230 million. Circulation revenue dropped 6.2 percent on lower single-copy sales and...

Tribune Revenue Falls 11.1 Percent in May on Declines in Several Units CHICAGO (AP) -- Media conglomerate Tribune Co. said Wednesday its revenue fell 11.1 percent in May as advertising declined in both print and broadcast segments. The company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and 23 television stations, said consolidated revenue for the period ended May 27 dropped to $406 million from $457 million in the prior year. Publishing revenue fell 10.3 percent to $292 million from $325 million last year, as advertising revenue fell 11.8 percent to $230 million. Circulation revenue dropped 6.2 percent on...

Tribune Co. said Friday that its $34-a-share tender offer for up to 126 million of its shares was heavily oversubscribed, and as a result the Chicago media holding company will buy a prorated portion of the shares tendered. Tribune said investors had tendered 224 million shares, representing 92 percent of the company's outstanding shares. The company didn't say what the pro rata percentage will be, noting that the count of tendered shares is preliminary. [Snip] The oversubscription was hardly a surprise, given the fact that investors were essentially being offered the option of receiving $34 for their shares now or...

By a May 14 deadline, 54 Chicago Tribune newsroom employees had offered to take early retirement in response to a job cut plan at the paper, sources say. Volunteers include such recognizable bylines as City Hall reporter Gary Washburn and columnist Charles M. Madigan. Last month, Tribune managers said they would cut 100 jobs, or a little more than 3% of the Chicago publishing group's 2,900 workers, in response to faltering revenue. Employees expect to hear the outcome of their applications by month's end. [Gregory Meyer]

Monday May 14, 8:00 am ET Publishing Advertising Revenues Decline 10.3%; Television Revenues Down 1.1% CHICAGO, May 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB - News) today reported its summary of revenues and newspaper advertising volume for period 4, ended April 29. Consolidated revenues for the period were $399 million, down 3.6 percent from last year's $414 million. Publishing revenues in April were $279 million compared with $305 million last year, down 8.6 percent. Advertising revenues decreased 10.3 percent to $217 million, compared with $242 million in April 2006. -- Retail advertising revenues decreased 6.8 percent as weakness in the...

May 7, 2007 issue - Whenever you see a deal involving Los Angeles's Chandler family, you usually see a tax dodge. And sure enough, the pending sale of Tribune Co., the big media firm in which the Chandlers are the largest shareholders, exploits a loophole so gaping that we taxpayers can only pray that someone closes it quickly. But it's not the Chandlers, the media magnates (L.A. Times and Newsday) whose shenanigans I've tracked for 15 years, who are dodging taxes here. It's Sam Zell, the Chicago real-estate mogul who's buying control of Tribune. As best I can tell, the...

NEW YORK Potentially sacked with $13 billion in debt on top of weak Q1 results the Tribune Co. is planning a new wave of job cuts, sources told the Chicago Tribune. According to Michael Oneal at the Chicago Tribune, 100 positions at his paper could be targeted for buyouts. It's not known how many cuts Tribune plans to make company-wide. If not enough people step forward to take the packages, Tribune could result to layoffs. On Thursday, Tribune reported a net loss of $15.6 million in Q1. Operating cash flow fell to $238 million from $271 million compared to the...

Thursday April 19, 7:57 am ET Tribune Falls to 1st-Quarter Loss on Severance Payments, Classified Ad Weakness CHICAGO (AP) -- Newspaper and television station owner Tribune Co., which recently accepted an $8.2 billion going-private bid from real estate mogul Sam Zell, said Thursday it swung to a first-quarter loss on weakness in classified advertising. The nation's second-largest newspaper publisher reported a loss after paying preferred dividends of $15.6 million, or 6 cents per share, compared with profit of $100.7 million, or 33 cents per share, in the prior-year period. Income from continuing operations slipped to $38 million, or 8 cents...

LOS ANGELES - The fate of the Los Angeles Times remained uncertain Monday after Tribune Co., its corporate parent, announced an $8.2 billion deal with Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell to take the company private. The deal scuttled a competing bid by Los Angeles moguls Eli Broad and Ron Burkle designed in part to return the acclaimed paper to local control. Tribune's ownership of the Times has been rocky. Disputes between the Chicago-based corporation and leaders at the Times have led to the dismissal of two publishers and two editors. Times staff members have been bracing for the possibility...

Sam Zell, a flamboyant Chicago real estate tycoon who has never run a newspaper, has won the battle of the billionaires for the Tribune Company, meeting the company’s demand for a higher bid to match one from Ronald W. Burkle and Eli Broad. Tribune announced that its stockholders will receive $34 a share, or $8.2 billion. Mr. Zell is supporting the deal with a $315 million investment and will join the board. The centerpiece of his proposal is a complex financial structure known as an employee stock ownership plan, which is to pay for much of the deal. Separately, the...

The best thing about an employee-stock-ownership plan is that it gives workers a stake in their company's future. Which is also the worst thing about it. That may never be more apparent than in the $8 billion sale of Tribune Co. Chicago real-estate magnate Sam Zell is vying against the duo of Los Angeles businessmen Ron Burkle and Eli Broad. Both propose using an ESOP representing Tribune's 21,000 employees to take a majority stake in the company. While use of an employee share plan offers the company's suitors a powerful tool to finance the deal, including attractive tax breaks, it...

snip Another possible source: Tribune's defined-benefit pension funds, which held assets of $1.76 billion as of Dec. 31, according to a company regulatory filing. The plans — including one covering employees of Times Mirror Co., The Times' corporate parent before its 2000 sale to Tribune — have mostly been frozen, meaning that no new beneficiaries are being added or new contributions being made. With the phasing out of the pensions, Tribune employees' main source of retirement savings is 401(k) investment plans, to which the company contributes. Robert Willens, a tax and accounting expert with Lehman Bros. in New York, said...

Mark Cuban in Megabucks Bid for Cubs TEAM SPIRIT CubanBillionaire blogger Mark Cuban is more serious about buying a major league baseball team than he's been letting on. The tech entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner is set to offer $625 million to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., according to a source familiar with the matter. "Mark is desperate to buy the Cubs," says the source. "He wants this so bad." Cuban hasn't responded to a message from Radar, but when asked about the Cubs in the past, he has admitted to being a potential buyer. "I'm always interested...

Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature's DFL majority seemed on a collision course earlier this month when they came out of the chute with immigration proposals for the 2007 session. Pawlenty, who seems to regard immigration mainly as a threat, wants a crackdown on phony IDs, while Democrats want to build on the asset that immigrants represent.

Management is thought to favor an internal plan that would require heavy borrowing. When the battle for control of Tribune Co. got underway more than eight months ago, investors hoped that a sagging share price would be bolstered as bidders assessed the true value of marquee assets such as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. But as it lumbers toward a conclusion in the coming weeks, the Chicago-based company's review of strategic alternatives has served, instead, to confirm the dim view that investors have of traditional media operators. With no clear premium offered...

Tribune's January Revenues Decline 5 Percent; Circulation Down CHICAGO (AP) -- Tribune Co. said Friday that monthly revenues dropped 5 percent in January, keeping up the pressure on the media conglomerate as it continues to study what steps to take to reinvigorate its operations and slumping share price. The worsening advertising environment for newspapers took a bigger toll than usual. Ad revenues from the publishing unit declined 7.3 percent from a year earlier to $268 million, lagging the rest of the industry. Amid an industrywide slump, J.P. Morgan analyst Frederick Searby called Tribune's latest advertising revenue revenues "the worst monthly...

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has joined the Chandler family in their bid to buy the Tribune Co. media empire, with an eye on the company's Newsday newspaper. Murdoch's primary interest in trying to strike a Tribune deal is not to own Newsday outright, but to combine that tabloid's business operations with that of the New York Post, which News Corp. owns, according to another source familiar with News Corp.'s plans. Murdoch's entry into the fray may generate more excitement for an otherwise lackluster auction for the troubled company that concluded last week The Tribune's board is mulling at least three...

AP) LOS ANGELES Tribune Co. directors prepared to deliberate over the struggling media company's next step Wednesday as a much-anticipated bidding period for its assets came to an anticlimactic close. Tribune - owner of the Los Angeles Times - remained silent about the results of the bidding for the company or its two primary units, newspapers and broadcast after a late-afternoon deadline for submitting proposals had passed. No announcement was made and none was expected, but the widespread view of those watching the review process closely was that no premium bid had been made. "We're not going to say anything...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Tribune Co.'s approaching deadline for potential buyers to submit final proposals to acquire the media conglomerate was being watched with interest Tuesday by Wall Street, but with low expectations that attractive offers were forthcoming. Investors nudged the company's slumping stock price still lower a day before the reported Wednesday night deadline. With the key parties remaining silent, analysts said there was no sign of any offer in the works that would be enticing enough for Tribune to sell itself profitably.