Media Decoder Blog: New Tribune Chief Signals Greater Television Focus

Two-thirds of the Tribune Company’s revenues currently come from the newspapers it owns. But that most likely won’t be true a year from now.

Peter Liguori, who was named the new chief executive of the company this week, said Friday that he was open both to selling some of the newspapers and buying more television stations. While he made no definitive statements on the matter, his sentiments lined up with investors’ expectations that Tribune will focus more on television and the Internet in the future.

Tribune emerged from bankruptcy at the end of December. It is now controlled by a number of private equity firms and banks. The company’s new board elected Mr. Liguori, a longtime television executive, to be chief executive on Thursday.

“I do think you’re going to see more television focus,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday, calling TV a “great opportunity” for the company. Tribune owns stations in big cities across the country, and operates a cable channel called WGN America that reaches about 75 million homes.

Mr. Liguori said he wanted to introduce more original programming on WGN America, including in prime time, and on the local stations. The stations, he said, “are a platform to introduce fresh, original content. If we own or co-own the content, that provides new revenue streams for us. We’ve yet to begin that fight, really.”

Then he brought up the statistic about two-thirds of the company’s revenue emanating from newspapers. Tribune owns The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and an assortment of other smaller papers. Newspapers are the tradition of Tribune, going back to its founding more than 150 years ago, he said, “and on a daily basis we’re going to have to focus on furthering that.”

Mr. Liguori spoke of being more “digitally focused” with a “deadline every minute mentality.” He described the company’s reporter bylines as brands. But he didn’t back away from the possibility that Tribune may sell off some of the newspapers in the months to come.

“People have called about the newspapers,” he said. “There are suitors. As the chief executive I have a fiduciary responsibility to hear these suitors out — to kind of weed out the contenders from the pretenders. And to see if in fact these suitors are willing to recognize the true value of these newspapers.

“With all that being said, I still think job one is managing the newspapers well; creating the best possible journalism; being as efficient as possible; creating programs for advertisers. And by concentrating on running the newspapers on a daily basis, we’re going to create the greatest value for the company.”

Separately, Mr. Liguori said Tribune is “certainly open” to acquiring more television stations.

“There are opportunities for us to look into duopolies and there are opportunities for us to horse-trade stations with other groups,” he said.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/new-tribune-chief-signals-greater-television-focus/?partner=rss&emc=rss