Tribune Company Plan of Reorganization Filed Today

From: Tribune Communications
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 1:23 PM
Subject: Message from Randy and Gerry/Plan of Reorganization Filed Today


Today, we filed a restructuring plan with the bankruptcy court that moves us closer to emerging from Chapter 11. The plan would keep the company intact, sharply reduce our debt, and provide us with sufficient liquidity to continue expanding our business and taking advantage of strategic opportunities.

Although the plan still needs to be approved by our creditors and the court, the filing is an important milestone, and is due in no small measure to your efforts. Despite the tough economy, last year our media businesses generated substantial operating cash flow, which positions us well for the future.

As the approval process moves forward, discussions with our creditors will continue and there may be objections filed with the court. This may result in a lot of noise; don’t let it distract you from doing your job. We believe the plan will be approved and that we will be able to emerge from bankruptcy later this year.

The most important thing to take away from today’s announcement is that this plan gets our capital structure in order and makes our debt manageable. It lets us emerge from Chapter 11 stronger than before and in a position to build on the momentum of the past two years.

Here are a few important points about the plan:

It gives the company sufficient liquidity to effectively operate our businesses.

It provides us a strong balance sheet and positions us for future growth with the ability to invest in strategic opportunities.

It is fair to our creditors and is intended to avoid expensive litigation that could further delay our emergence from bankruptcy protection.

It contemplates that the company’s equity securities will become publicly registered and traded after emerging from bankruptcy.



Tribune will continue its recently implemented employee retirement plan, featuring a 401(k) with a company matching contribution and a discretionary profit-sharing allocation. As we said last fall, the company’s employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) will end and the shares held by the ESOP and in employee accounts will be extinguished.

Finally, while we’ve said this before, it’s worth repeating: Thank you—for staying focused, for your continued hard work, energy and ideas, and for your willingness to face difficult challenges head on.

Today’s filing is a positive step and brings us closer to achieving our goal of creating an entrepreneurial company that takes Tribune’s great brands and leverages them with your talent to shape the future of news, information and entertainment content creation and delivery. Our job right now is to keep focusing on what we do best—producing sustainable, relevant news and information products for our users, readers, viewers, listeners and advertisers across all our media platforms.

If you have further questions, we encourage you to visit TribLink where we’ll post some anticipated Q&A, or call the toll-free number we’ve established: 888/287-7568. We will continue to keep you updated on major developments.

The press release we issued today is attached.

Randy and Gerry