NORFOLK
Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, citing the "credit crisis," announced Wednesday that it has taken most of its properties, including Dominion Enterprises, off the market. But the company is continuing negotiations to sell The Virginian-Pilot.
"We are having discussions regarding The Virginian-Pilot Media Companies with an interested buyer," Landmark's vice chairman, Richard F. Barry III, said Wednesday. "The buyer is encouraged about obtaining financing."
He declined to identify the prospective buyer or say when he expected the sale to be completed.
The Virginian-Pilot and its affiliates employ about 1,260 people, mostly in Hampton Roads. The Pilot's associated businesses include Web sites such as Pilotonline.com and more than a dozen specialty publications, such as Link, Port Folio Weekly, Inside Business, and newspapers on military bases.
Barry said Landmark will suspend the sales process for most of its businesses, including Dominion Enterprises, an information and marketing
services company, which owns a year-old, 20-story building downtown. Dominion Enterprises has about 5,400 employees nationwide, including 900 in Norfolk.
Barry said Norfolk-based Landmark still is talking to potential buyers for two other properties. He would not identify the businesses but said neither is in Hampton Roads.
"We had strong interest from buyers for all of our properties," he said, "but the credit markets impeded their getting financing."
In a statement, Landmark's chairman and chief executive officer, Frank Batten Jr., said: "The credit crisis has made it virtually impossible for companies to obtain bank commitments to help finance acquisitions. And the recession has reduced revenue and earnings and made it very difficult to value a business....
"We are proud of our businesses," he said, "and confident about their future - and will not sell them at a time of uncertainty at depressed values."
Batten said Landmark will continue to operate most of its businesses "for several years before reinstituting the sales process," but it will consider offers in the interim.
Newspaper-industry analyst John Morton said he wasn't surprised that Landmark was dropping its plans to sell most of its businesses. He noted that other newspapers remain on the market, including most of Cox Enterprises' publications and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
"The market is awash in sellers and no buyers," said Morton, who is based in Silver Spring, Md. "Right now it's the credit, but it wasn't happening before the credit tied up. People are very leery. They're not sure what they should pay or how well the newspapers are going to come out of the recession they've been in."
Facing steep market declines in advertising revenue and circulation, newspapers have lost more than half of their value since 2002, he said.
Landmark officials announced in January that they were looking to sell all of the businesses owned by the privately held media company. They did not offer a reason.
In September, Landmark completed the sale of its most profitable business, The Weather Channel Cos., to NBC Universal and two private-equity firms. The sal e price was not disclosed, but people close to the parties said it was about $3.5 billion.
Two weeks ago, however, Landmark announced that the planned sale of its Nashville television station to Bonten Media Group Inc. of New York had fallen through because of credit-market problems.
Landmark's businesses, minus The Weather Channel Cos., have combined revenues exceeding $1 billion a year, Barry said.
In conjunction with the suspension of the sales process, Landmark announced the retirements of three executives.
Decker Anstrom, the president and chief operating officer, will leave by the end of the year. Bruce Bradley, the president of the Landmark Publishing Group, and Charlie Hill, executive vice president for human resources, will retire on Nov. 14.
All said the timing was right to make way for the next generation of leaders.
Anstrom, 58, who joined Landmark in 1999 as president of The Weather Channel, said he plans to move to Washington with his wife and "return to my first love - the nonprofit or public sector."
Bradley, 58, said he had planned to retire in his late 50s or early 60s. He started at Landmark in 1974 as an advertising salesman. Bradley said he will teach a class in leadership next semester at Old Dominion University's College of Business and Public Administration and was not sure of other plans.
Hill, 64, joined Landmark in 1991. A prostate cancer survivor, he said he would expand his nonprofit work with the Hampton Roads Prostate Health Forum, which encourages education, screenings and research, and the Crispus Attucks Cultural Center, which provides arts programs for students at the Attucks Theatre in Norfolk.
Batten will remain chairman and CEO of Landmark and Barry vice chairman. Anstrom's position will not be filled, Barry said, because Landmark "is not as large a company as it once was."
Michael Abernathy, the president of Landmark Community Newspapers Inc., based in Shelbyville, Ky., will succeed Bradley as president of Landmark Publishing Group, which oversees The Pilot, three other daily newspapers in Roanoke, Greensboro, N.C., and Annapolis, Md., and more than 70 other publications. Abernathy will continue to be based in Kentucky.
A successor to Hill has not been named, Barry said.
Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
News Shopping
The idea of an unbiased newspaper (or any news source for that matter) is moot in this day of news shopping. You have countless news sources vying for advertising dollars and viewer/readership. We, as consumers, news shop for the station or publication that will reaffirm our stance and tell us what we want to read or hear. Or we seek out the opposite view so we can rage, argue and point fingers. We all know that if you want a more liberal point of view, you watch MSNBC and if you want a conservative point of view, you watch Fox News. I certainly wouldn't watch Fox News and then complain to them about being too conservative... that's like buying an orange and complaining that it doesn't taste like an apple.
re: I'm waiting to see what
cowpower,
Thanks for the link to The Richmond Times Dispatch's editorial; it deserves to be posted again. It was level headed, logical in reasoning, gave credit and criticism all around (except for Biden...LOL). No Obama supporter will read or believe it because they think emotionally, something very frightening when selecting your vote for the most powerful leader in the free world.
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion/editorials/more.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-10-26-0058.html
"As for the Times-Dispatch's
"As for the Times-Dispatch's endorsement of McCain, some may recall that the T-D also advocated racial segregation, even if it meant keeping schools closed, long after the rest of the state and the nation had moved on. The editorial editor of the T-D has been famously lampooned through the years for being who's going to be "dragged kicking and screaming into the Twentieth Century." (Yes, the 20th Century.) Hardly progressive."
The Times Dispatch never claimed to be "progressive" (what an idiot term). The "progressives" (Democrats) were the party of slavery. The Republicans (Lincoln) fought it and defeated it!
Glass-Steagall
the act was repealled by a vote in congress for the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. the U.S. Congress at the time was Republican, and passed the act with a vote that was heavily partisian. President Clinton signed it into law. So it was not "the democrats doing, it was a republican congress and a democrat President.
Super Mega Dittos lawrence82104!
Super Mega Dittos lawrence82104!
The VP is worth its weight in gold for ads, classifieds, and occasionally the obituaries. Excellent job in that area. Occasionally, I use it to paint on or clean fish. Reading it for a fair and balanced source of news does not come to mind. That is a shame.
By the way
By the way, if any such sale is made, better hope it goes through before the new President takes office - we all know what will happen to Capital Gains taxes if Democrats get their way.
who would buy the Pilot?
Print news is a dying outlet. Papers across the nation have abused their positions for decades; they are now well-known mouthpieces for liberal causes and for the extreme left wing of the Democratic party. As a result, fewer people are reading the papers, and those who still do read the paper are slowly leaving us. A savvy new owner could try to restore credibility to the publication, but would be fighting entrenched liberal employees who will see any move toward actual reporting (as opposed to the accustomed planting of underlying liberal messages in every story) as a move to the extreme right, and would fight such a move every step of the way. I'd like to see the house purged, and real reporting resume, but I'm not optimistic. Good luck.
Weather Channel
I think the Weather Channel will recoup it's $3.5 billion this year from ad revenue. They should be close, even at $1 per ad.
Should have known we were in ditto-head land here
A newspaper's job is not to parrot the voices of its most extreme readers. It is an advocate for honesty in government and for truth in all aspects of community life. Keep in mind the editorial page is run by different people than the news dept.
Re: The Glass Steagall Act. Though repealed during the Clinton term, the leadership of both parties argued for this change. They were all wrong.
As for the Times-Dispatch's endorsement of McCain, some may recall that the T-D also advocated racial segregation, even if it meant keeping schools closed, long after the rest of the state and the nation had moved on. The editorial editor of the T-D has been famously lampooned through the years for being who's going to be "dragged kicking and screaming into the Twentieth Century." (Yes, the 20th Century.) Hardly progressive.
tiodio
Why read a newspaper if it's going to bring you this much pain and heartache? I loathe Faux(Fox)News, therefore I do not read their online "news" or watch their cable channel because I find it too biased toward right-wingers. Problem solved.
It never ceases to amaze me . . .
How so many people will complain and complain about the VP claiming it is bias and making all sorts of other complaints - and yet they don't drop it for another newspaper. I guess they just like to complain and have something to complain about it. Bias is in the eye of the beholder. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to read it!
Do you all realize the impact on local news....
I know reading the re-packaged AP/New York Times wire pieces can make a person ill HOWEVER think about everything we get from the Pilot about where we live - that's the stuff you won't find cruising the web.
You better hope that new owners care about our community and continue to support the excellent job the paper does keeping us up to date on the things that impact our daily lives..... No body else provides that, TV and radio read Pilot stories for their local coverage!
The next time you want to knee jerk critize the paper because of national reporting think about what they provide in local reporting and what they give back to our community.
You never miss the water until the well runs dry
I'm waiting to see what
I'm waiting to see what their Presidential endorsement will be. Did you see the Richmond Times Dispatch's endorsement of McCain? It's brilliant! So well reasoned.
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion/editorials/more.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-10-26-0058.html
Ditto what...
lawrenceb82104 said...maybe whoever buys it will realize they're in the heart of Conservative Virginia and not in Liberal New York...next to the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation it's the worst paper in the South...
As add revenues and circulation plummet
It would be foolish for anyone to buy a newspaper at this time. But who knows, maybe an offer was made that couldn't be refused.
Sincerely,
Mr. Corleone
Lawrence
You want a buyer to "reverse" the Pilot's "biased agenda?" In other words you want them to agree with you. Or maybe you meant to say "eliminate" the bias?
Yes, the Pilot is liberal. No secret there. If you don't like it, go to Fox News...the bastion of "unbiased agendas."
Mega Dittos
Ditto lawrence82104!
It would be a pleasant change to have a protaxpayer, pro-limited government newspaper for our region. One that doesn't mock the beliefs of our conservative citizens.
ILikeSnacks is correct.
ILikeSnacks said, “the unexplained censorship and having messages sitting in ‘waiting for approval’ for ridiculous amounts of time”.
Ditto. I've been posting here without "prior approval" since the bLetters section began. But now that it's election time, I have also been put on the "prior approval" list.
I am an independent voter. My non-conservative letters always get approved, but my non-liberal letters are now routinely rejected. They also wait about 20 hours to post the ones they do allow, causing them to appear six or seven letters down the list. As I wait for mine to be approved, I see flaming lib letters like those from am81430 constantly appear above my pink box.
I truthfully believe that the only reason the Virginian-Pilot occasionally posts conservative leaning editorials is to keep from losing half their subscribers.
Audit Bureau of Circulations
I'll bet when the year-to-year circulation for the Virginian-Pilot is publicly released next week it will mirror the significant drop seen in the top-25 newspapers across the nation. That's what happens when you appear to be biased in your reporting--people stop buying the paper.
Please sell
Maybe the new owners will turn it into something besides a waste of perfectly good paper!
Hey Flight,....
Any idea what this is all about??
The Glass Steagall Act (not Glass Stiegel Act, as some misspell) was setup over 70 years ago by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Glass Steagall/Glass Stiegal Act was repealed 9 years ago in 1999 by President Bill Clinton. Some of the current financial problems in the United States in the mortgage industry could potentially be in part due to the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act.
Umm I thought not.
May be true, but the newspaper is horrible.
May be true, but the newspaper is horrible.
Sad but True
The contribution of Landmark and many of its executives has been a shining light to many who have been inspired to contribute to local civic organizations. No one in my recent memory has made more quality contributions in time and expertise than Bruce Bradley. I sure hope he intends to remain here in Hampton Roads and that he will continue to lend his own considerable talents to the many civic organizations that have benefitted from his wise counsel.
Maybe someone will
Maybe someone will buy them that knows how to properly run an interactive web site. They could actually communicate with users rather than the unexplained censorship and having messages sitting in "waiting for approval" for ridiculous amounts of time.
Ditto lawrence82104!
Ditto lawrence82104!
The PIlot's for Sale?
I'd go as high as, say, $50.
Have your people call my people...we'll work something out.
Ditto lawrence82104!
Ditto lawrence82104!
Landmark
I hope the Pilot gets bought by someone that will reverse all of their biased agendas.Only the New York Times is as bad.
The Party That Wrecked
The Party That Wrecked America used to crow about the "Economy Roaring Ahead!" and "the highest rate of home ownership in history!". Don't seem to hear much about that anymore. It only took them eight years to ruin our republic. Shall we give them another four to pick our bones clean? I don't think so.