We almost made it a whole week without getting deep into the Washington Post Co.‘s efforts to sell Newsweek. Things got so bad for a while we even had to talk about nontransactional news instead, like the magazine’s Web redesign and — horrors! — its reporting on the Gulf oil spill. So it comes as something of a relief today to discover that, per the New York Post, TV Guide owner Open Gate Capital has its eye on the troubled newsweekly.

Still, the private equity firm isn’t betting on a short-term turnaround. The Post quotes Open Gate CEO Andre Nikou: “”No way is there immediate profitability. It will take a lot of heavy lifting. It’s probably two or three years away.”

Open Gate has a history with storied-but-struggling publications. It bought TV Guide for one dollar in 2008, and made a run at BusinessWeek before that magazine’s eventual sale to Bloomberg last October.

Open Gate now joins Politico, Reuters, “Power Rangers” guy Haim Saban and Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman on the list of mooted Newsweek buyers.