Then, as now, CBS Television Distribution, Oprah's syndicator, followed with its own statement essentially saying that naturally it would love for Winfrey to stick around, but it's her decision.

Although debate raged over whether there was substance to the new report, it's probably worth remembering that it will be true sooner or later. If not today, then someday. Deal with it however you see fit. Maybe ask yourself: What would Oprah do? Then, call your best friend Gayle to commiserate.

Continue reading my Nov. 6 column "Say it ain't so, O: New speculation Winfrey might leave show and Chicago behind?"

Tribune Broadcasting has renewed its deal with NBC Universal to continue airing the trio's syndicated shows for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons on the majority of its 23 TV stations across the country, Sean Compton, Tribune Broadcasting's senior vice president of programming and development, said Thursday.

The deal should enable the weekday programs to continue to be economically viable. An NBC Universal spokeswoman declined comment.

"The show continues to perform strong and we have a good relationship with all three of the talent and are glad we’ve come to an agreement," Compton said. "I hate the saying that if it's not broke, don't fix it, but it's not broke and ... I don’t want to be the jerk who goes from a 1.0 rating to a 0.5 with some goofy idea," he said. "Jerry’s goofy enough. I don’t want anything goofier."

A spokesman for Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions responded with a familiar refrain to a report from Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood site. The report said Winfrey plans to take her Chicago-based daytime talk show from syndication and to her new cable network in 2011, when her deal with CBS Television Distribution ends.

In other words, eventually -- if not in 2011, then someday -- Winfrey will in fact quit.

But if you feel as though you've heard this before, there's a reason. One year ago this week, I wrote this column that appeared last Nov. 9:

Oprah crisis averted, so you can climb off the couch -- if only for now

For a stretch of time on Friday—while people still buzzed about her "30 Rock" visit the night before, wondered whether she would establish diplomatic relations with Sarah Palin and watched her finally meet the guy whose shoulder she sobbed on in Grant Park—the end of Oprah Winfrey's reign as Queen of Daytime TV was in sight.

But before there was time to jot feelings in a journal or find just the right scented candle to neutralize the trauma or squeeze in a stress-busting power walk or curl into a fetal ball while downing the most amazing sherbet available only in Poughkeepsie every other weekend in August, the scare had passed.

Like Tom Cruise, America could climb off the couch. Crisis averted.

The chief executive of Discovery Communications, Winfrey's 50-50 partner in the Oprah Winfrey Network, which is set to launch next year, told Wall Street analysts Winfrey was poised to shutter her Chicago-based internationally syndicated show in 2011 after 25 seasons. "The expectation is that after that, her show will go off of … syndication, and she will come to OWN," he said.

But no one speaks for Oprah but Oprah, and, of course, Oprah's media relations team.

Lisa Halliday, chief spokeswoman for Winfrey's Harpo Productions, dismissed Discovery executive David Zaslav's comments as, um, premature.

Winfrey's current deal with CBS Television Distribution for "The Oprah Winfrey Show" does expire after the 2010-11 season, but Halliday issued a statement to clarify that "she has not made a final decision as to whether she will continue her show in syndication beyond that."

Continue reading my Nov. 9 column "Oprah crisis averted, so you can climb off the couch -- if only for now"

Other winners include newly announced New York Times partner Chicago News Cooperative ($50,000), Columbia College Chicago ($45,000) for a project involving the Chicago Tribune's Chicago Now site, Loyola University Chicago ($45,000), the Community Media Workshop ($45,000), Beachwood Media ($35,000), Gapers Block Media ($35,000), Brad Flora ($35,000), Northwestern University ($30,000), South Suburban Publishing ($30,000) and the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists ($30,000).

“The Chicago area has become a real laboratory for development of the future for community news and information,” Terry Mazany, the Community Trust's president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Grants will be funded in December. More money is expected to be awarded next year.

WFLD-Ch. 32 Vice President of News Carol Fowler talked to public radio's "On the Media" recently to discuss the debate within the station over whether to air video of the September beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert, which made the crime a national story. (An audio link is above. The  transcript is here.)

"I've got to tell you as news director it certainly gave me pause," Fowler told host Bob Garfield. "My first thought was, how can we possibly put this on TV? But one thing I have learned over the years is that one or two managers shouldn't be making a decision this important. You include the whole newsroom, to the degree you can, in the discussion. And that’s literally what we did."

Ultimately, Fowler said, reporter Darlene Hill convinced her.

"There’s a lot of lip service paid to, well, these kids have to walk through unbelievable circumstances to get to and from school," Fowler said."This shows exactly what it is like. We had a journalistic obligation to air it. How could you not? We just had to."

Fowler, who earlier discussed this on the station's blog, also talked to Garfield about the circumstances under which the video was shot and how WFLD paid to acquire it.

Formal prohibitions on owning both a cable system and a broadcast outlet in the same market went away with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

But the Federal Communications Commission still conducts a review of such mergers to determine whether it's in the public interest before signing off on a transfer of broadcast licenses.

Some argue that, in an age of ever-expanding digital media options, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for any one entity to have too much control of information, as long feared by Big Media opponents.

But a marriage of these media behemoths would offer opponents of media consolidation a golden opportunity to reopen that debate, especially with a potentially sympathetic Democratic administration now in the White House.

Continue reading my Nov. 4 column "Comcast-NBC deal may pose regulatory questions"

"Stu is the editor who'll help us make chicagobreakingsports.com the success we all envision," Mike Kellams, the Tribune's associate managing editor for sports, noted in a Tuesday announcement to the paper's staff.

At the Sun-Times, where Courtney worked 22 years, he was the obvious in-house choice to succeed Bill Adee as sports editor after Adee (now the Chicago Tribune's digital editor) abruptly left for the Tribune in May 2002. Courtney immediately took over on an interim basis and officially got the job about three months later.

Courtney is scheduled to assume his new post Wednesday. He will report to Kellams, who called him "a steady hand and true professional."

The Sun-Times has not yet named a successor to Courtney.

A graduate of Indiana University and a Chicago-area resident for 30 years, Courtney is leaving the Sun-Times a little more than a week after it and its suburban sister publications were saved from liquidation. An investor group led by Chicago businessman Jim Tyree -- and including Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz --completed its acquisition of the papers on Oct. 26.

The Tribune earlier that day rebranded its sports section Chicago Sports and officially launched chicagobreakingsports.com. The new Chicago Breaking Sports site was conceived as an online source for sports news as it occurs in much the same way as the Tribune's chicagobreakingnews.com site does with real-time headlines and oft-updated dispatches.

What recalled this was Comcast SportsNet Chicago's announcement Friday that it will be dropping Mike North's live three-hour weekday program with Dan Jiggetts and Jen Patterson. How they'll hold up between now and their final show Dec. 31 remains to be seen, but if you're going to get rid of your "Monsters," Halloween Eve seems about right.

On the day before Halloween, Comcast SportsNet Chicago announced the demise of its "Monsters."

"Nothing lives forever," Jim Corno, president of Comcast SportsNet, said Friday. "Even 'Gunsmoke' couldn't live forever."

And some things only last a year.

CSN said that it and Mike North's Licorice Ltd. "have mutually agreed not to renew" North's "Monsters in the Morning," the live weekday program that launched in January on both Comcast SportsNet and the ill-fated Chicago Sports Webio site.

"Comcast SportsNet thanks Mike, Dan and Jen and the 'Monsters' crew for putting on a quality show and remains open to exploring other programming projects with Mike and his staff in the future," the cable channel said in a statement.

Saying his investment in Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co. represents "certainly the most amount of money I've ever lost in a single deal" billionaire Sam Zell said Wednesday that he no longer believes the media company will emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy before the end of this year.

"With some reasonable luck, I think it'll be out sometime by the end of the first quarter (of 2010)," Zell, Tribune Co.'s chairman and chief executive, told Bloomberg Television. "I've been involved in a lot of  bankruptcies in my life -- most of the time as the buyer of the debt as opposed to the debtor in possession. Bankruptcies, by definition, are very frustrating, and they will continue to be."

Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 protection last December because it was struggling to manage the debt from the deal Zell engineered to take the company private a year earlier. The heavily leveraged transaction for $8.2 billion saddled the Tribune Co. with $13 billion in debt just as the bottom fell out of the advertising market

The original deal gave Zell a $90 million warrant that gave him the right to buy about 40 percent of the company for $500 million and has been the basis of his control of the company. "I don't think that that structure and that original plan will survive in bankruptcy," Zell said in the interview.

Zell also holds a $250 million note representing a loan he made to Tribune Co. as part of the going-private transaction, but that note is near the bottom of the hierarchy of claims in Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy case and is seen as unlikely to retain any value during the capital reorganization.

With regard to the allegation by some bond holders that the Tribune Co. leverage buyout should have been seen as doomed from the start and therefore represented "fraudulent conveyance," Zell said it's a common argument in bankruptcy cases.

"Most of the junior creditors in most of the scenarios will allege a fraudulent conveyance," he said. "In the end, it's very difficult to prove, number one. Number two, in this particular case, I  don't think it's valid. But ultimately it becomes a basis for negotiations."

Zell said he was "very happy for the Ricketts family," which acquired control of the Chicago Cubs from Tribune a day earlier. The transaction for the Cubs, who haven't won a World Series in 1908, has been valued at $845 million.

"I think the team should be owned by somebody who is local, somebody who is really passionate about baseball," Zell said. "I happen to be local. I'm not passionate about baseball. So I wish them all of the best of luck. And maybe we'll break the 101-year curse."
 
In an April interview with Bloomberg, Zell said that the Tribune Co. deal was, by definition, "a mistake" in that it lost money. He was asked yet again Wednesday if he regretted the deal and would do it again if he could go back in time.
 
"You can't look  back," Zell said. "As I've said oftentimes, my head only work straight. So the answer is: If we made a mistake, or it didn't work it, it didn't work. ... and in this particular case, there was such a crash in the revenue side of the entire newspaper business. As you see by the other companies, nobody could survive it."

The reason given for not doing so is that the Chicago Tribune's parent had just plunked down $20.5 million in 1981 for the Chicago Cubs to ensure the ballclub remained on WGN-Ch. 9 and WGN-AM 720, even though the cable channel would have been cheaper.

The Cubs did in fact yield huge dividends for the media company's broadcast outlets, a legacy that will continue even now that the Ricketts family assumed control Tuesday in a deal worth $845 million. But the Weather Channel was sold last year to NBC Universal and a group of equity partners for an estimated $3.5 billion.

And if Tribune Co. had bought the Weather Channel, it's doubtful anyone would have accused this newspaper of a pro-weather bias or held it responsible when the weather was lousy. Even in October. Even this October.

Less than 24 hours before the Tribune got out from under the big blue shadow of the Cubs, the rival Chicago Sun-Times officially took on Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz as a benefactor.

Continue reading my Oct. 28 column "Sometimes the conflict is matter of perception"

A change in Illinois law with the new year will allow the CNC to reorganize next year as a low-profit limited-liability company, or L3C, which would enable it to straddle between nonprofit and for-profit status but still solicit donations. The CNC aims to produce enough revenue from membership fees, ads and service fees to be able to sustain itself without philanthropic assistance in five years

The Chicago Reader says it distributes 100,000 print copies each week in Chicago and select suburbs and racks up more than 750,000 weekly page views.

Its short news and information segments with a strong local lifestyle and entertainment bent, presented by Jeanne Sparrow (pictured), are to slip in between the regular syndicated fare on the two channels weekdays between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m.  The four segments Monday ranged in length from four minutes to 11 minutes.

“It’s focused especially on women, getting through the day, doing it economically,” said Neal Sabin, Weigel’s executive vice president. “We will not focus on blood and guts. We are not going to send a reporter to the airport to report that the traffic’s slow. I’ve said a traditional news director would blow their brains out over this and then we wouldn’t report it. We’re not doing that kind of stuff.”

Headlines and video come from CNN and a deal with the Chicago Sun-Times. “We get to use (the Sun-Times’) content, not their people, but the things that they’ve written locally,” Sabin said. “It’s a very nice promotion for them.”

Other segments, such as love advice and movie reviews, will be provided by a variety of contributors, mostly unknown but whom Sabin said “are going to become knowns.”

Although “You & Me” is fronted on camera by Sparrow, formerly of WMAQ-Ch. 5 and WGCI-FM 107.5, at the helm is Dick Tracy, who was named Weigel’s Chicago director of content shortly after the new local interstitial A.M. programming venture was announced in July.  Tracy is a veteran of 25 years in advertising, the last 11 as vice president/creative director at DDB Chicago, developing multi-platform content for McDonald’s, Budweiser, Bud Light, CapitalOne and other brands.

At that time, Sabin also said there would be some sponsored content and product placement that would be clearly identified.