TV-Newspaper Unions Unravel as Gannett Plans Split
One of the last remaining unions between newspapers and TV is coming apart.
More than three decades after a merger that tethered newspapers with television broadcasters, Gannett Co. (GCI) Chief Executive Officer Gracia Martore is the latest media executive to decide that her 46 TV stations and 81 U.S. daily newspapers, as well as USA Today, are worth more apart than together.
Belo Corp. kicked off the trend in 2007, announcing the isolation of its faster-growing local TV stations from newspapers, such as the Dallas Morning News, that were facing plunging advertising revenue as readers moved online.
Rupert Murdoch caught on two years ago and completed the split of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc. last year -- segregating newspapers like the Wall Street Journal from TV gold mines such as Fox News and FX. Tribune Co. jumped on the bandwagon a year ago, and just today its broadcasting and publishing businesses started trading independently.
The allure of the combined arrangements faded as readers, marketers and classified listings migrated to the Internet, reducing newspapers’ advertising and circulation revenue. The publishing arms started to become a drag on growing broadcast and TV operations. Now, the theory is that the separated businesses will attract unique shareholders willing to value the operations more on their own.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-05/tv-newspaper-unions-unravel-as-gannett-plans-split.html
