Report: Liguori Set to Become Tribune CEO

Former Discovery exec chosen by new ownership group

By Jon Lafayette -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/16/2012 3:08:50 PM

Former Fox and Discovery executive Peter Liguori is expected to be named CEO of Tribune Co. when it emerges from bankruptcy, the Chicago Tribune reports.

A new ownership group is preparing to take control of the media company by the end of the year, and those owners have chosen Liguori to run the company, sources told the paper.

A Tribune Corp. spokesman declined to comment.

Last year, Liguori left Discovery where he'd been COO. He was overseeing The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) until Oprah Winfrey assumed full-time hands-on responsibility for the cable channel. Before Discovery, Liguori was at News Corp. where he was head of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting and ran FX. More recently, he's been consulting and serving on boards.

Tribune owns 23 TV stations and WGN America in addition to papers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Tribune was taken private by real estate investor Sam Zell, who loaded the company with billion in debt. The deal went bad as finances of the newspaper publishing business took a dive.

Former DirecTV exec Eddy Hartenstein has been CEO of Tribune since last year.

The Media Bureau Friday extended Tribune's newspaper-broadcast crossownership waivers, a move that will allow the transfer of station licenses to the new owners and pave the way for the company to emerge from bankruptcy.

John Eggerton contributed to this story.