STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER ROBERT M. McDOWELL
The Applications of Tribune Company, Transferors and Sam Zell, et al., Transferees, For Consent to the 
Transfer of Control of The Tribune Company and Applications for the Renewal of License of KTLA(TV), 
Los Angeles, California, et al.,
I am pleased to support the transfer of control of the Tribune Company to a new team headed by 
Sam Zell.  I am also pleased that today’s Order gives Tribune’s new owners the opportunity to keep their 
combined newspaper-broadcast properties.
Approving this transaction allows the new owners to breathe new life into Tribune’s newspapers 
and broadcast properties.  Tribune’s readers, viewers and listeners will benefit from its strengthened and 
more efficient news-gathering operations.  Allowing for continued cross-ownership of the company’s 
newspapers and broadcast stations furthers the Commission’s statutory duty to promote competition, 
diversity and localism by invigorating a voice that might otherwise fade. Our Order today also allows 
Tribune to compete against a growing chorus of new media voices in the information, opinion and 
entertainment market place that do not live, and would not have developed, under a multi-platform cross-
ownership ban.
I thank the Chairman for bringing this matter to a vote this week, and I thank the Media Bureau 
staff for their hard work on this proceeding.