Outside of listening to Jim Cantore, I really lost interest in watching TWC. Looks like some changes are coming down the road.
Landmark looks into selling Virginian-Pilot, Weather Channel
By Bill Choyke
Philip Walzer
The Virginian-Pilot
© January 3, 2008
Landmark Communications Inc., parent of The Virginian-Pilot, has hired national investment firms to explore selling the Norfolk-based company, including The Pilot.
“I can confirm that Landmark Communications has retained investment banks JPMorgan and Lehman Brothers to assist in exploring strategic alternatives, including the possible sale of the company’s businesses,” said Richard F. Barry III, vice chairman of the company.
JPMorgan is advising Landmark on the sale of The Weather Channel, one of its largest properties, and Lehman Brothers is advising the company on the sale of its other media assets, Barry said.
He declined to say whether the company would be sold in whole or part, or at all.
“We are exploring strategic alternatives, and that can entail a number of possibilities, one of which is the sale of the company’s businesses,” he said. “It’s very early in the process.”
He also would not say why a decision was made now to explore the sale of the company.
Landmark and The Virginian-Pilot trace their history in Norfolk to 1865. The parent company employs 9,000 nationwide, while The Pilot has about 1,200 employees locally.
Top officials at The Pilot were told Wednesday to attend a meeting this morning, and an announcement was expected shortly thereafter.
Bruce Bradley, publisher of The Pilot and a Landmark employee for 34 years, said, “While I am saddened about this development, I understand and agree with the business reasons for exploring these options.” He also declined to say why the company was being marketed now.
Denis Finley, editor of The Pilot since 2005, said that if sold, he hoped a company with Landmark’s ethics and principles would be the buyer and continue the 143-year-old commitment to local journalism.
The Weather Channel, based in Atlanta, is one of the last privately owned cable channels in the United States, and Landmark has been known in the past to brush aside offers for it. With its Web site weather.com, The Weather Channel and its related properties could bring more than $5 billion, a person close to the sale said.
In an interview with The New York Times in June, Debora J. Wilson, The Weather Channel’s chief executive, said, “Every media conglomeration has approached Landmark, and there’s never been a yes. We actually think that we’re stronger being independent.”
Landmark’s 2006 sales figures were estimated at $1.75 billion, according to Hoover’s, which tracks private companies. Landmark is parent to nine daily newspapers and more than 100 non-daily newspaper and specialty publications.
Besides The Weather Channel, Landmark’s non-newspaper properties include one of the world’s biggest weather data companies, TV stations in Las Vegas and Nashville, Tenn., and Norfolk-based Dominion Enterprises, a national chain of print and online classified-ad publications, which alone represents more than $850 million in revenue.