April 27, 2024

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Tribune Looking for Buyers, and Imus Stays Put

The Tribune Company, owner of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, is looking for bankers to help sell some of its papers after it emerges from bankruptcy on Dec. 31, according to a Bloomberg News report. Rupert Murdoch has been reported to be interested at least in the Chicago and Los Angeles papers for his new publishing-focused News Corporation.

An aide to Britain’s culture secretary attempted to ward off reporters investigating the minister’s expense reports by warning them about her role in implementing press regulations outlined in the Leveson Report, according to The Daily Telegraph. The paper, which had reported that the secretary, Maria Miller, was submitting expenses for her parents’ house in London, said that her aide told reporters: “Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors’ meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about.”

Don Imus, the 72-year-old host of “Imus in the Morning” has signed on to do his radio show for three more years. Mr. Imus has much lower numbers than hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity but his popularity in New York means that the show can charge higher advertising rates.

The authors of “Game Change” have signed a deal with Penguin Press to release their coming book about the recent presidential campaign, “Double Down: Game Change 2012.” HBO, which based a film on the 2008 book, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, has already optioned the rights to the new film.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of Reed Hastings, the chief executive for Netflix, for possible violations of disclosures laws after he wrote about a company milestone on Facebook, says more about the flawed rules surrounding public information than it does about bad acts by Mr. Hastings, writes Steven M. Davidoff, the Deal Professor columnist for DealBook. Announcing that Netflix had streamed a billion hours of programming in one month doesn’t seem to divulge information that is either private or material, he writes.

Finally, Rupert Murdoch added some of his own reporting to a Times article on Monday that outlined Michael Bloomberg’s interest in buying possibly buying The Financial Times. In a tweet this morning, Mr. Murdoch wrote: “Bloomberg may buy FT but likes New York Times too. Both small change for him and new challenge after 12 years great public service.”

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/the-breakfast-meeting-tribune-looking-for-buyers-and-imus-stays-put/?partner=rss&emc=rss