CHICAGO — In a pivotal board meeting Thursday, Tribune Co. named a committee of directors to explore options that could include a breakup or outright sale of the venerable media company that owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and other newspapers and television stations nationwide.
Tribune said the special panel of independent directors would study "alternatives for creating additional value for shareholders."
Companies often use such language when they put themselves on the path toward a sale or a breakup. Tribune said it expected to complete the process by the end of this year.
Tribune bought Times Mirror Co., then the parent of The Times, in 2000 for about $8 billion, expecting that ownership of television stations and newspapers in the same cities would give the company an edge with advertisers and in pursuing the emerging Internet arena.
But those benefits did not materialize.
In a five-hour meeting on the 24th floor of Tribune Tower, a massive Gothic landmark in the heart of downtown Chicago, the board unanimously approved a restructuring of two partnerships at the center of a boardroom rift that broke out this summer involving the Chandler family, which controlled Times Mirror and is now Tribune's largest shareholder bloc.
The family had been pushing to restructure the partnerships, which had been an obstacle to a sale or other transaction that might have lifted the company's battered stock price.
The three Chandler representatives on the 11-member board abstained from voting. Under Thursday's deal, the Chandler family will receive stock in Tribune that will raise its stake. Restructuring the partnerships will also cut the family's potential tax burden from the sale of any assets.
Tribune Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis J. FitzSimons said in an interview Thursday night that the deal with the Chandlers could make it easier to sell the company or take it private, but he emphasized that the company had not committed to any alternative.
"It eliminates the impediments to all kinds of things," said FitzSimons, who previously has opposed pursuing such radical strategies as a sale of the company or its largest property, The Times.
The special committee is made up of seven independent board members, including Pasadena resident Enrique Hernandez Jr., who is chairman and CEO of Inter-Con Security Systems Inc. Neither FitzSimons nor the three representatives of the Chandler family are part of the committee.
