REPORT: TRIBUNE LIKELY TO BE DISMANTLED

Tribune Co.’s exit from bankruptcy next year is likely to be followed in short order by a piecemeal sale of its broadcasting stations, newspapers, and other assets, including its Tribune Tower headquarters in Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business observed today (Monday). The business journal quoted Michael Ferro, who led a group of investors to buy Sun-Times Media Holdings, which owns the city’s second-largest newspaper, as predicting that “in 2013, everything will be in play” at Tribune. The company’s most valuable assets are its television stations, which include WGN-TV in Chicago, WPIX in New York, and KTLA in Los Angeles. They are expected to be sold off separately from Tribune’s newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Baltimore Sun, since buyers, aware of the continuing decline of newspapers, will not likely be interested in taking on the burden of trying to rescue them. TV is another matter, however. Media analyst Dough Arthur of Evercore Partners in New York told Chicago Business: “The TV business is pretty good right now. Auto (advertising) has come back strong. Political (advertising) is going to be at record levels.”