The previous deal between the two sides expired on March 31 and as a result, 23 Tribune Stations across the country and WGN America were pulled from the satellite provider.

“We are extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with DirecTV and to return our valuable news, entertainment and sports programming to DirecTV subscribers,” Nils Larsen, Tribune Broadcasting president, said in a statement. “On behalf of Tribune Broadcasting, I want to thank viewers across all of our markets for their support, understanding and patience during the negotiating process—we truly regret the service interruptions of the last several days.”

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A major issue in any potential transaction would be whether the Register is purchased as a free-stranding entity or the buyer also takes ownership of Freedom’s eight television stations and its more than 100 daily and weekly newspapers. In the interests of minimizing taxes on the transaction, Freedom’s management is known to favor a sale of the entire company, as opposed to the piecemeal disposition of individual assets.

Even so, we’ll keep our fingers crossed that Freedom will be sold off in bits and pieces and not as a giant entity. Consolidation may be good for operating expenses, but it is lousy for newsrooms.

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The 60′s were obviously a very important time for Abrams.

Of course, there’s nothing innovative about bad ideas, incompetence, and sexual harassment. But watching Abrams insist otherwise is kind of entertaining.

See the full interview here.

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This is all according to inside sources who spoke to the media outlets on condition of anonymity. We are praying that they are reliable sources who are right about everything.

What seems to have motivated the board to consider ousting Michaels was not the prolonged downward spiral of the media properties under his management, but the embarrassing report by the NY Times detailing his inappropriate, sexist behavior, and the resignation of fellow exec Lee Abrams over an embarrassingly sexually explicit memo. From the Chicago Times:

Board members, sources say, began to worry about possible liability issues related to their fiduciary duties and started exploring Michaels’ fitness to run the company.

In other words, they woke up. Now when are they gonna get rid of the guy?

Previously on FBLA:

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Ding dong, the witch is dead. Two days after Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams was suspended without pay for sending out a risque email to the entire Tribune staff, Abrams has resigned.

It may have taken sexually explicit material to get rid of him, but staffers have long been offended by Abrams’ weekly email rants, his terrible ideas, and his general lack of respect for journalism. From the LA Times:

Championing change at Tribune newspapers and broadcast outlets, Abrams repeatedly accused TV news of clinging to a late-20th century look, sound and feel. He wondered aloud whether readers knew that a newspaper dateline meant the reporter was actually writing from the location where the story occurred.

Abrams also advocated new and different styles of storytelling and conveying information. In Houston, where the Tribune TV station has virtually no viewers to lose, he was developing an anchorless newscast.

It’s not known what will happen to Abrams’ Tribune projects and initiatives with his departure.

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Colleagues:

As you have seen, the company is making some changes to the operations of our Washington office, beginning with the naming of Cissy Baker to the new position of vice president of the Washington News Bureau of the Tribune Co.

More details will be unveiled in the coming days, but one thing that will not change is the mission of the bureau: to continue to break news and deliver unique and high quality enterprise, investigative and analytical stories to our readers — in print, online and over the airwaves.

Most of the staffing for the new operation will come from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune and we will continue to give our readers the top-notch journalism that they have come to expect from us.

Russ Stanton
Editor

[UPDATE: LAT issues press release about McManus which follows:]

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Jeff Jarvis goes on a surprising attack — not against Sam Zell and the Tribune Co., but against the former and current LAT staffers who are suing the company.

A usual defender of Old Media, Jarvis says reporters and editors are not blameless for the rapid decline of newspapers. Groaners by nature, journalists didn’t embrace change fast enough — shorter stories, going online, feeding the need for local news that TV (and the Internet) now dominate.

The Times veterans should not be suing Zell. They should be suing themselves. Oh, I, too, am angry at the state of newspapers in America but I’m angry at the right people. The LA Times’ problems — like those of other papers — were caused by by decades of egotistical and willfully ignorant neglect by the owners, managers — and staff– at the paper.

Will anyone at the former Times Mirror take a look in the mirror and see themselves in these descriptions? We’d love to hear from you and learn what you think.

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Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams spoke at Society for News Design‘s annual workshop in Las Vegas this weekend, urging listeners in his standard glass-is-half-full-of-unicorns way that newspapers aren’t dead.

“I just try to inspire people to rethink things, to take nothing for granted,” Abrams said. “There’s no reason we can’t create a newspaper renaissance. Papers are everywhere — it’s not like it’s a new startup business. We have to focus on rethinking. Think dramatic. Think urgency. Dramatic issues require dramatic solutions.”

Drama? Renaissance? Why do we have the sinking feeling Abrams going to rent Times Mirror Square out for the Ren Fair?

– Via Romensko

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The Inkstained Retch today reports that Zellots are still fuming over a July BusinessWeek story that portrays Sam Zell as horribly misguided.

Gary Weitman, Senior VP of flakdom for the Tribune Co. wrote a letter to BusinessWeek to “set the record straight” … a setting that the anonymous insider Retch takes apart point by point in its posting today.

Ah. If only the ugliness were confined to redesign prototypes.

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Merry pranksters scaled a Los Angeles Times building Thursday to unfurl a three-story high banner protesting news cuts by the paper’s owner, real estate billionaire Sam Zell.

The banner was hanging from the historic Times building in downtown Los Angeles. It read: “Zell Hell: Take back the Los Angeles Times.” A website address on the bottom directed the curious to the mysterious protest site by an anonymous Times employee: www.tellzell.com

“Like many of us, he got in over his head in the mortgage crisis,” said one Times employee who participated in the banner drop. “He can’t afford what he bought. But instead of selling his house, he’s chopping it into pieces.”

The banner was the most dramatic in a series of protests that have broken out at the LA Times and across other newspapers owned by Zell, who took over the Tribune Co. at the beginning of this year.

Since then, Zell has ordered the firings of more than 300 reporters and other workers at the LA Times and slashed the space available to run stories.

The cutbacks have reduced the amount of news, analysis and in-depth reporting available to readers—especially important information during an election year. And it has deprived Southern California of a voice.

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But our favorite new/old trick is the byline count. We were subject to the byline count as a measure of our worth in a previous life, and we know just how much of a morale-booster this can be. Not to mention that people who do things like bring down nefarious leaders, expose institutional wrongs and protect the public good generally don’t churn out copy with the frequency of an obit writer.

Well, if anyone at the LAT is discouraged enough, we might soon be looking for a third blogger…

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But we’re having a hard time laughing at the latest lunatic musings from Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams:

Then there’s possibly a painful reality that maybe TV stations don’t want to associate with what they may think is a tired declining brand. They’d rather be in bed with Google. I’ll be real honest here — at XM, we were approached by many newspaper brands for news channels, but the thinking was that we’d be better off with a more contemporary brand to associate with. (We DID have a short lived USA Today Channel). Our thinking back then was that newspapers had the content, but generally had a dated image.The solution: Well, that’s why I am SO obsessed with rethinking and redesigning newspapers. Not only to increase circulation and grow again … but to turn around the tired image into a very modern and vibrant one. A VERY healthy and alive local paper can drive the news on SO many platforms. Invincible. A modern newspaper brand on a modern TV station — Huge. That healthy and vibrant paper will drive EVERYthing.

Abrams wants to capitalize on the content of newspapers by turning them into content producers for TV and radio? Well, that certainly is innovative.

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According to Mary Ann Milbourn‘s post on the topic:

It was the second time this year that S&P downgraded Freedom’s credit rating.

Douglas S. Bennett, Freedom’s chief financial officer, said the Freedom rating was part of an industrywide downgrade of newspapers and reflected a worst-case scenario for the company’s performance this year.

“It seems we’re being compared to a Tribune Co. or Journal Register or others in different financial positions because of their amount of leverage,” Bennett said. “Our position as a company is we will continue to monitor and manage our business such that each and every day we plan to stay covenant compliant.”

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Sam Zell, currently $12.8 billion in debt with the Tribune Co., is reportedly structuring a possible sale of Newsday in a way that could save him hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains taxes.

The idea of a non-cash asset swap has been swirling about talks with suitors for Newsday, including News Corp. chief and New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman.

Any deal could potentially save the media mogul between $175 million and $245 million in capital gains tax. Or as Zell calls it, pussy money.

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The press release begins: “Another freaking Clear Channel Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been named President of Tribune Interactive.”

And it goes on from there in a manner that will likely make employees feel so much better about newsroom job cuts and dwindling resources.

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