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Competing Tribune lenders are still fiddling over the bankrupt company — while its local TV station WPIX burns.
The confirmation hearing for bankrupt media conglomerate Tribune is expected to resume today, after months of haggling among creditors, if court-ordered talks yesterday between two competing groups of lenders do not result in a settlement, a source close to the situation said.
A confirmation plan for Tribune and a new plan of attack for WPIX appear badly needed.
Ratings for WPIX among the highly coveted 25-54 age group, which were trailing WNYW-Fox 5 by just 1.16 to 1.10 in October, saw the gap widen to 1.35 to 0.92 in December and then 1.96 to 0.84 last month, according to Nielsen.
In addition, Chris Burrous, who joined the station last June as part of an overhaul directed by News Director Bill Carey, and anchored the “PIX Morning News,” was transferred last month to Tribune’s Los Angeles affiliate KTLA after ratings failed to grow under his stewardship.
A WPIX spokeswoman pointed out that WNYW’s lead-in, “American Idol,” draws much higher ratings than WPIX’s CW reruns.
That may be true, but the ratings disparity started in December, a month before the “American Idol” season debut on Jan. 19.
WNYW, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.
Carey also ran into turbulence last year when he hired long-time friend Larry Mendte as a commentator although he had been let go by KYW-TV in Philadelphia after allegedly hacking into co-anchor Alycia Lane’s e-mail. Soon after salacious details of a bitter lawsuit between the two recently surfaced, Carey sent Mendte to Libya for an exclusive interview with Muammar Khadafy.
He accompanied former Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon, who has a long history with Khadafy, and went to broker a truce.
Skeptics inside the station told The Post they believed Mendte wanted to go on the assignment so he could rebuild his reputation weeks before he faces charges for damaging Lane’s reputation.
Weldon and Mendte this week returned from Libya essentially empty-handed.
“This is a station that fires people left and right, and they’ll pay for a Libya trip,” a WPIX insider said.
As for the Tribune reorganization, hedge fund Aurelius and Deutsche Bank, which have competing plans, are trying to get JPMorgan and others who financed Sam Zell’s disastrous 2007 Tribune buyout to pay them more for settling charges of profiting from financing a deal that they say rendered Tribune bankrupt from the start.
If they do not reach an agreement, the bankruptcy judge may take another six months to choose a winning plan, another source said.