Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian P. Tierney apparently gave a rousing talk to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association last week, all about the incredible success story that is the Philadelphia Inquirer. It is difficult to say what Tierney might have gained by flying halfway around the world to give a presentation to 350 editors and publishers from 23 countries, but if the full rundown available at Garcia Media is any indication, he bowled them over.

A couple of highlights, as transcribed by a conference attendee:

“We have an incredible armament of assets, starting with the brand. Our greatest asset is journalists. We also know the community like nobody else. We are in a unique position to relate to advertisers. But we must go out and offer them variety. At the Inquirer we created a team whose function is to adapt advertising from other media — such as television — and design it for newspapers. We show these models to advertisers as possibilities of what could be. When we do, they buy it.”

And this:

“There were 18 people working on philly.com when I arrived, generating $1 million in banner ads. Today, we have 70 people working on philly.com, generating $16 million in banner ads.”

Judging by the rest of this long report, however, there was no mention made of PMH’s continuing financial woes or the recent cost-cutting, which we’ve covered here and here.

According to a report released today by Standard & Poor’s, the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News has received a forbearance agreement from its creditors that will run through September 10th. Philadelphia Media Holdings, the investor group put together by publisher Brian P. Tierney to acquire the papers and philly.com in 2006, will face a serious financial penalty — interest on its debt will climb a full percentage point — in exchange for being allowed to skip payments during that period. PMH has also offered to surrender $15 million from its revolving line of credit, reducing it to $35 million.

The change in the line of credit is moot, yet speaks volumes. The company is already prohibited from accessing its credit line after violating a term of their loan covenant several months ago. S&P is also reporting that PMH is seeking a $3.2 million letter of credit — a short-term, stopgap funding measure.

Perhaps most tellingly, the market is shying away from a media ship that looks increasingly like the Titanic. PMH’s loan was trading at 70 cents a dollar in early June, but is now trading in the mid 40s — another signal that the market believes PMH is in serious financial difficulty. “The good news is their lenders are continuing to work with them,” says Chris Donnelly, vice president of Standard & Poor’s LCD, a unit that tracks the leveraged finance market. “Without an agreement that gives them access to their revolving credit line, they probably have a very challenging cash position. But this buys them some time to negotiate a permanent solution.”

A phone call to PMH and an e-mail to Tierney seeking comment were not immediately returned. — Steve Volk

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Press Lord 2.0

Times are tough at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, where 68 employees were laid off this week following publisher Brian P. Tierney’s telling the newspapers’ unions in January that the company needs to cut 10 percent of its costs by summer or fall or face “a dire situation.”

But could the tough times also be affecting Tierney?

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Heads keep rolling at Philadelphia Media Holdings. This January, CEO Brian P. Tierney told union chiefs at the Inquirer and Daily News that the company needed to cut 10 percent of its costs. According to a just released Newspaper Guild memo, the publisher has followed up by laying off 68 employees, mostly from the ad department (though none from editorial). As might be expected, the Guild is less than pleased, accusing the company of creating a “climate of fear.”

Read the full memo after the jump:

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Legendary Philadelphia columnist Pete Dexter has been quiet for a while, spending most of his time on a new novel. But early last year he did release a collection of his old newspaper pieces, Paper Trails, which has now become the subject of a dispute between the book’s publishers and Philadelphia Media Holdings, the publishers of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Dexter’s old paper, the Daily News.

Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, was supposed to release a paperback version this spring, but it’s been delayed by PMH’s contention that Dexter never acquired the necessary permissions to reprint material he wrote for the DN. This isn’t the first time since local owners took over the papers that a fracas has arisen over a book. But it is the first time Pete Dexter’s involved, so it figures to be something of a show even if the stakes, financially speaking, aren’t all that high.

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Brian P. Tierney didn’t really drop a bomb today — he just warned union honchos representing Inquirer and Daily News staffers that such a weapon exists.

Citing bleak economic forecasts and difficulty making debt payments incurred when Philadelphia Media Holdings acquired the news properties in May 2006, Tierney predicted a “dire situation” by summer or fall if the company cannot find ways to cut costs by 10 percent. “It’s worrying,” said one news staffer. “It seems we’ve been through an endless series of cuts, buyouts and layoffs. I don’t know how far they can continue cutting, but it’s not promising.”

(more…)

This morning’s meeting over at 400 North Broad was worse than anybody thought. Straight from a Newspaper Guild release:

Tierney: We Face A Dire Situation

We urge all members with any ideas for building revenue or cutting expenses to communicate them to Guild officers or to voices@local-10.com. We will then prepare a comprehensive response to the company’s request for help.

Stay tuned to the Daily Examiner for updates. — Steve Volk

Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian Tierney will meet this morning with union heads representing the vast majority of employees at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. According to sources inside the newsroom, the main topic of the 10 a.m. meeting will be the “shitty state of the economy” and its expected effects on the newspapers. He might also address the status of the expected sale of the company’s historic headquarters at 400 North Broad Street.

Tierney held a similar meeting with newsroom management late last week in which he applauded the newsroom’s efforts and boasted of a huge spike in pageviews on philly.com, the company’s web property. Before anyone could order up a case of champagne, however, he also noted the advertising department needs to “step up its efforts” and said the current hiring freeze would continue “for the most part.”

The hiring freeze is of particular interest because Inquirer editors have been meeting with potential new hires for several weeks. Now it seems that at least some of that hiring might be put on hold. Stay tuned for whatever it is Tierney has to say to the troops. — Steve Volk

Photo: Bill Cramer

Philadelphia Media Holdings, the parent company of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News, has replaced circulation director Mike Proebstle with relatively recent hire Jim Gregory.

The timing of Proebstle’s departure is particularly curious: The Inquirer and Daily News were among the few newspapers in America to post small circulation gains when the latest industry figures were reported early this month.

Reached by telephone, Proebstle declined to comment.

Gregory has been with PMH only since April. He previously worked for 25 years at the Courier-Post, where current Philly Media Holdings VP Mark Frisby served as publisher from 2001 until he joined the Philly papers roughly one year ago. Frisby announced Gregory’s promotion earlier this week in a staff memo that never even mentions Proebstle, who, according to a bio still available online, “started with Philadelphia Newspapers in January 2002 and during his over 4 years of tenure has consistently achieved market share gains versus the other print media in the marketplace.”

Frisby, Tierney and Gregory did not return calls requesting an interview. — Steve Volk

Feisty FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who last week proposed rules that would totally stick it to everybody’s favorite cable behemoth, Comcast, came up with something yesterday that could actually save the hide of Inky publisher Brian Tierney.

Martin proposed relaxing a rule that bans newspapers from owning TV stations (and vice versa) in the same market. If the plan flies — his FCC brethren will vote on it December 18th — Tierney and his Philadelphia Media Holdings partners would be free to go shopping for a Philly TV station as a way of bolstering the Inquirer’s increasingly shaky ad sales situation.

The tricky part? Almost all of our local TV outlets are network-owned, so unless Tierney can find a way to wow Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, GE or Disney, their stations are off the table. Which leaves only MyPHL 17 — currently owned by the Tribune Company — as a possible target.

But wait, the Tribune Company? Don’t they own newspapers? Why yes, they do — including the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times and Newsday. Which suddenly makes you wonder if Brian Tierney would be less interested in buying a TV station from Tribune than in selling them the Inky and Daily News, for which he and his partners seriously overpaid a year and a half ago.

Tierney was not immediately available for comment. — Tom McGrath

F.C.C. Planning Rules to Open Cable Market [NYT]
FCC Chief Offers New Plan on Cross-Ownership [WaPo]

Photo: Bill Cramer