Thomson’s trims: Terminus? Chain clustering continues

NewsInc November 25, 1996 An agreement in principle for a three-way swap between Thomson, Hollinger and Cox for nine papers on Nov. 1 largely continued the current vogue of clustering among chains. web site greenville daily news

Hollinger left the deal with the lion’s share of readers, picking up Thomson’s Mt. Vernon, IL, Register-News, the Enid, OK, News & Eagle, and the St. Joseph, MI, Herald-Palladium. The papers’ total circulation is about 67,000.

“We viewed the papers separately and apart from synergies” with other Hollinger operations, said Ken Serota, Hollinger’s vice president of law and finance. That said, he added, the Mt. Vernon daily is close to Hollinger operations in southern Illinois, and the Enid daily fits neatly into the company’s belt of papers there.

Thomson, in turn, scored two of Hollinger’s Indiana dailies, the Greensburg Daily News and the Hartford City News-Times, as well a nearby twice-weekly, the Batesville Herald Tribune. In a press release, Thomson said those papers, with a combined circulation of about 12,000, will join the chain’s Indiana strategic marketing group of dailies located in Logansport, Kokomo, and Anderson.

Cox acquired Hollinger’s Tarboro, NC, Daily Southerner and Thomson’s Marshall, TX, News Messenger, with combined circulation of about 15,000. The latter fits in with Cox operations in Longview and Nacogdoches, and the former will fit in with the North Carolina group Cox began with its Greenville Daily Reflector acquisition (NewsInc., Jan. and continued when it swapped six Arizona papers for two of Thomson’s in North Carolina on Aug. 20 (NewsInc., Sept. 2).

The three-way deal also involved an undisclosed amount of cash.

“We’re trying to knit together clusters of papers that we think can serve good growth markets,” said Cox Newspapers president Jay Smith, in outlining the clustering strategy. Circulation of the papers in question “may on their own be 10,000 or 15,000, but if you can put enough together, that gives you the opportunity to sell ads to a much larger market and, potentially, to operate them a lot more efficiently.” The news followed on the heels of the Oct. 29 announcement that Thomson had reached an agreement in principle to sell three papers–the Petersburg, VA, Progress-Index, the Shamokin, PA, News-Item, and the Valley View, PA, Citizen-Standard–to the Lynett family that owns the Scranton, PA, Times. go to website greenville daily news

With these deals, and with 11 papers it sold to MediaNews and Ogden Newspapers earlier this fall, Thomson has dealt with 16 of the 29 non-strategic dailies it put up for sale or trade on Sept. 20 (NewsInc., Oct. 14).

According to Thomson president Dick Harrington, another announcement will follow shortly after you read this, probably around Nov. 30, when the company will make public further transactions from its sale list.

Following that forthcoming announcement, Harrington said, “all are accounted for except for nine, in the sense we’ve got agreed-upon prices and, most likely, letters of intent” to purchase the other remaining newspapers.

The other nine, Harrington added, “are in negotiations, but we haven’t finalized price or letters of intent.” Unrelated off-the-record talks with sources at other newspaper groups confirmed that at least two major chains are in negotiations with Thomson.

Though August’s Thomson-Cox swap featured unspecified other considerations as part of its terms, Smith said that, save for the cash Cox netted in that deal, there’s no connection between the two transactions. Those considerations, he said, may be made public by mid-December.