The parent company of the Orange County Register has named a new chief executive two months after emerging from bankruptcy reorganization.
Longtime television executive Mitchell Stern was named to lead Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc., which owns the Register, 32 other newspapers and eight TV stations and has yearly revenue of about $500 million.
Stern takes over Thursday.
The 54-year-old takes over for Burl Osborne, Freedom’s interim chief executive for the past year after Scott Flanders left to run Chicago-based Playboy Enterprises Inc.
Osborne, who saw Freedom through a five-month bankruptcy reorganization, is set to remain on the privately held company’s board.
In February, Stern joined Freedom’s board as a part of a group of directors who came aboard as part of the company’s bankruptcy.
Unlike Osborne, who came from the parent company of the Dallas Morning News, Stern’s background is in TV, not newspapers.
Stern joined News Corp.’s Fox Television Stations in 1986 and led its Twentieth Century syndication arm from 1998 to 2003.
From 1990 to 1992, Stern was vice president and station manager at what’s now KTTV Fox 11 in Los Angeles.
Stern moved to El Segundo-based DirecTV after News Corp. bought a third of the satellite TV company’s parent in 2003. He abruptly left in 2005.
Since then, Stern has been a director of Sherman Oaks-based Triton Media Group LLC, a provider of software and services to media companies.
Earlier in Stern’s career, he held programming and management positions at CBS Corp. in New York. He has a business master’s from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Stern joins Freedom at a time of transition.
Three New York-based investors have emerged as Freedom’s key owners after bankruptcy: Angelo, Gordon & Co.—which has acquired stakes in other struggling newspaper companies—Alden Global Capital and Luxor Capital Group.
Angelo Gordon and the others gained stakes in Freedom by acquiring its debt as the company underwent reorganization.
Freedom filed for bankruptcy last year after trying to strike a deal to appease creditors holding about $1 billion in debt.
Most of the debt was incurred in a 2004 buyout by private equity firms Blackstone Group LP and Providence Equity Partners LLC.
The 2004 buyout was designed to keep members of Freedom’s founding Hoiles family in control. But the resulting debt proved crushing when Freedom’s newspapers slumped in the downturn.
The company’s debt holders and recent debt investors took over ownership in exchange for forgiving about $445 million in debt.
Freedom still has about $325 million in debt.
The reorganization ended the Hoiles’ control of the company. For the first time since R.C. Hoiles bought the Register in 1935, Freedom’s board doesn’t include one of his descendants.
Some believe Freedom’s new owners could drive changes at the company.
Angelo Gordon has been buying stakes in other distressed media companies, including Chicago’s Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times.
The firm could push for a combination of the Register and Times, some observers speculate. Freedom and Tribune reportedly held talks about combining the Southern California papers in 2008.
