Business

KENNEDY TO CASH IN

A bidding war has erupted for the rights to Sen. Ted Kennedy‘s (D-Mass.) autobiography, which could end up well into the mid-seven figure range.

The floor price to get in the running is believed to be around $2 million.

The book is being handled by noted Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Barnett, who has run auctions for everyone from Alan Greenspan to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Selected publishers met with Kennedy in Washington in September and were asked to give their assessments of what they could do by last Friday. The auction began Monday.

“It should be over by [today],” said one source in the fray.

Trouble

The Ron Burkle-controlled Source Interlink Cos. has agreed to terms of around $1.2 billion to take over American Media Inc., but sources say bankers are getting a little skittish.

“The banks want him to put more equity into it,” said one source.

Since American Media already has about $1.1 billion in existing debt between bank loans and junk bondholders, a $1.2 billion agreement does little more than refinance the debt at this point.

Also, since The Post broke the story on Oct. 25 that merger talks between the two companies were back on, shares in publicly traded Source Interlink have tanked to new 52-week lows.

At the time the story ran, the stock was trading at $3.64 a share, but by Nov. 9, the stock had spiraled to a new low of $2.06. It has since risen and yesterday closed at $2.48.

Bondholders have about $500 million of the debt in AMI. And as of early this week, AMI has made no move to show them any kind of a deal.

That has at least one bond holder growing increasingly skeptical that a deal can be pulled off in a credit market crunch.

“Stranger things have happened, so you never know,” shrugged the bond holder.

In its last talk with bond holders after the last quarterly earnings, AMI Chief Financial Officer Jack Craven indicated that plan B, to get Muscle & Fitness and four other magazines audited and sold off, was still in the cards. Execution of a merger or buyout deal would delay that.

Meanwhile, insiders at AMI are grumbling about what appears to be a big corporate suck-up to their potential new owner in the latest issue of Star magazine, which hits today.

Star is hyping America’s sexiest billionaire bachelors, and devotes a big spread to Burkle, the Yucaipa Cos. chief executive who has been trying to put together a deal to buy American Media for months.

“Is it coincidence or did [American Media CEO] David Pecker insist that it happen?” asked one source who heard of the upcoming feature.

A spokesman for AMI and Pecker insisted that his boss had nothing to do with the pick.

The article “plays off the Forbes billionaire list and Burkle’s on the list.”

Pecker has long been accused of meddling in the editorial process, going back to his days at Hachette Filipacchi, when he triggered an editorial uproar when he killed a piece on Planet Hollywood and Sylvester Stallone, apparently at the insistence of Ron Perelman, who at the time had a short-lived partnership with Hachette in Premiere magazine. And editors at AMI routinely have to present the covers of the weekly and monthly magazines to Pecker before they go out the door.

A spokesman for Burkle insisted that the billionaire knew nothing about the upcoming story until Media Ink called and he subsequently contacted Star.

“They didn’t call us,” said the spokesman. “They are repeating what they saw in Forbes.”

On that list, there were said to be 30 bachelor billionaires, and while all will be on the Star’s Web site, somewhere between six and 10, including Burkle, are going to make it into the print version.

Sightings

Michael’s Restaurant on West 55th Street has held sway as a media hot spot for years, but lately the media mob, for one reason or another, seem to be in a veritable feeding frenzy.

Last Friday, socialite Patricia Duff tossed a party for Fats Domino at the restaurant, with tables normally seating three or four arranged in long banquet style down the center of the dining area. In a far corner sat the Rubensteins, Howard and son Steve, chatting with architect Frank Ghery. Late arriver Mel Brooks, who is back on Broadway with “Young Frankenstein,” also wandered by for a hello.

On Monday, there was a totally new crowd, with American Media Editorial Director Bonnie Fuller dining with Alpha Media CEO Kent Brownridge.

What made their meeting intriguing is that although Fuller signed a new $6 million contract that doesn’t expire until 2009, there are some who say that with all the recent upheaval at AMI, Fuller might be looking for an exit strategy.

“We were just having a very nice catch up,” said Fuller of her meal with Brownridge.

What about her recent swing through the offices of VH-1 and E! in Los Angeles?

“I was talking with them about working with Star editors,” she said.

And what about this crazy idea that she wants to start some kind of women’s social networking Web site – even though she has always had a little trouble with the concept of e-mail?

Well, Fuller tells us it just isn’t so. “I’m having a great time here,” she said. “I want to see Star have a higher profile.”

If that wasn’t enough, just a few tables away from Fuller and Brownridge sat their old boss, Jann Wenner, who was dining with Jean Pigozzi, heir to the Fiat auto fortune and for a brief time in the mid- 1990s, owner of Spy magazine.

It was Wenner who broke the uncomfortable ice – both Fuller and Brownridge have had rocky relationships with the Wenner Media chief in the past – and came over to say hello to the two diners.

Meanwhile, a short distance away, New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick was dining with Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel.

Remnick had dined with Jon Meacham, the Newsweek editor, only a week earlier, so he is clearly an equal opportunity gabber.

A Time spokeswoman said Stengel and Remnick had both attended Princeton University some years apart and both took a class with legendary non-fiction author and professor John McPhee, so there was a common thread.

But Remnick says there was more: It turns out they both earlier attended the same summer camp in Lenox, Mass. keith.kelly@nypost.com