More on the sale of the Virginian-Pilot
The next chapter in the sale of Landmark Communications — the corporate parent of The Virginian-Pilot, the Greensboro News & Record, The Roanoke Times and The Weather Channel, among others — is about to begin.
The Pilot building on Brambleton Avenue in
Norfolk. Our newsroom is on the second floor;
Landmark corporate HQ is on the third.
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And again, we’re amazed at the lack of information on the sale. And at the tough tone our home paper, The Virginian-Pilot, is taking.
Reporter Phil Walzer used this lede today:
Landmark Communications Inc. provides news from Norfolk to Las Vegas and weather updates nationwide, but the media company is communicating little about the potential sale of its properties.
The reason for our story: The New York Times and Reuters reported last week that bids are in for the Weather Channel — the big prize in the Landmark Cracker Jack box. A Landmark official has been quoted as saying $5 billion would be “a fair price” for The Weather Channel.
Five. Billion. Dollars. Man, that would pay for a lot of newshole.
Anyway, the parts of the story germane to print operations:
For The Pilot, [Silver Spring, Md.-based newspaper industry analyst John Morton] said, the most likely buyer would be a company “that owned properties with some geographic connection” or one that acquires newspapers in the Southeast. But, he added, “somebody could come out of nowhere, a private equity firm, like the one that emerged to buy the Minneapolis Star-Tribune” last year.
Media General Inc., which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has bought papers in the Southeast, but “I don’t know if they’re in the mood to do that right now,” Morton said. He said he doubted The Washington Post would make a bid “because it has not been interested in buying newspapers for decades.”
Spokesmen for Media General in Richmond and The Washington Post Co. declined Monday to say whether their companies had any interest in The Pilot, saying they do not discuss potential acquisitions.
As far as process goes:
Morton… said the sale of The Pilot seemed “a little slow” compared with those of most daily papers, which he said tend to take two to three months.
The typical process, he explained, was that after the [financial prospectus] books are produced, two rounds of bids occur. After the first round, the seller evaluates the offers and often invites the top two or three to bid again, Morton said. “They know they’re among the finalists,” he said, “but the company wants to see how much they really want it.”
The Pilot’s publisher, Bruce Bradley, was quoted from a Downtown Norfolk Council breakfast meeting on Tuesday as saying the “books” were still being revised.
Amusingly, Walzer closes his story with a quote from Alan Breznick, an analyist for a New York-based communications firm, talking about the Weather Channel:
“I hope whoever gets it doesn’t mess it up,” Breznick said, “because I’m a fan of The Weather Channel. I like watching the maps and seeing the storms and seeing those geeky meteorologists get all excited when a new snowstorm hits.”
Ah, those weather geeks. Ya gotta love ‘em.
One of the best-known Weather Channel geeks,
Jim Cantore. I wonder what he pays in personal
injury insurance premiums…
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Meanwhile, those of us on the newspaper side are still waiting to hear our fate.
We’ll keep you posted.
Sigh…
Read our earlier stories about the sale of The Pilot and its parent company here and here and here and here.