Root for the home team

15 September 2006 By Lauren Silva

The Red Sox is not the only Beantown institution lagging its New York counterpart. The Boston Globe newspaper has been a drag on the Times. The Times could conceivably recoup the $1.1bn it paid for the Globe, allowing it to focus on its core franchise, one of the media’s best.

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The New York Times Company said Wednesday it hopes to sell its television broadcast group, which includes nine television stations, in order to focus on the print and online business.

The broadcast group, which owns stations in Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Iowa, accounted for about 5% of the company's total revenue in 2005. The New Yorkbased firm, acquired by the family of chairman Arthur R. Sulzberger in 1869, has hired Goldman Sachs to explore the sale.

The New York Times Company joins number of other newspaper companies that recently sold off assets. Tribune, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, sold two television stations in June for $197m. McClatchy sold 12 newspapers this summer for $2.1bn after acquiring newspaper rival Knight Ridder.

Shares of the New York Times have lost nearly a third of their value over the past year, and recently the company faced calls from shareholders to give up the dual share structure that gives the Sulzberger family control over the board. The company has about 144m outstanding Class A shares, which are publicly traded, and family members own about 20% of these.

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