Charles Apple

Just when we thought the first shoe was about to drop on the sale of Landmark Communications — the corporate parent of The Virginian-Pilot — there is a snag.

Landmark’s headquarters are on the 3rd floor of
The Virginian-Pilot’s Brambleton Ave. building
in Norfolk.
—

Brian Stelter of The New York Times reports this morning:

A group led by NBC Universal is in exclusive negotiations to buy the Weather Channel, NBC confirmed on Friday, hours after Time Warner withdrew its bid. The acquisition may be completed in a matter of days.

An NBC spokesman, Cory Shields, said the consortium, made up of NBC Universal and two private equity firms, the Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, had been “selected to participate” in the negotiations with Landmark Communications, which put the channel up for sale in January.

The NBC group’s bid amounts to more than $3 billion, according to an executive close to the transaction, down significantly from the $5 billion that Landmark had hoped to receive. Another executive said Time Warner withdrew from the bidding on Friday morning because of concerns about the price. The executives declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the negotiations.

Time Warner, which owns CNN and other news and information outlets, had shown interest in the Weather Channel’s Web site and other assets but had told Wall Street it would exercise “price discipline” in the bidding.

It won’t be until after the Weather Channel sells that we’ll proceed to the sale of Landmark’s other assets, including its three dailies: The Pilot, The News & Record of Greensboro and The Roanoke Times.

Read our previous coverage:

Jan. 2: The breakup of Landmark and sale of its assets is first announced.

Jan. 4: The Pilot’s owner confirms his intent to sell.

Jan. 11: Pat Robertson announces he wants to buy the Pilot.

Jan. 14: Tight-lipped Landmark execs cause Pilot staffers to get their own news from the wires. But the Pilot uses strong language in its news stories.

March 11: The request for bids goes out.

May 19: Arkansas-based chain said to be interested in buying The Virginian-Pilot.

May 31: Bids are reportedly in for the Weather Channel.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under Industry woes, Virginian-Pilot, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.