But who’s going to pony up? I will, says Eli Broad.

The Los Angeles billionaire, who made his money in the home-building and insurance businesses, thought about buying his hometown Los Angeles Times a couple of years ago. But Sam Zell ended up taking the paper as part of his ill-fated Tribune Co. purchase in 2007.

Now that Tribune is in Chapter 11, Broad could pick it up at a substantial discount.

Reuters:

“Eli Broad, a wealthy philanthropist who once looked at buying the Los Angeles Times, is still interested in a foray into the newspaper business, he told a gathering in New York on Monday night.

‘We can’t afford to lose good newspaper journalism, investigative reporting,’ the 75-year old retired business maven said during a lecture on business in philanthropy at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

Broad, jokingly, said: ‘I’ve regained my sanity since then,’ referring to his earlier interest. But turning more serious, he added: ‘I would like to see our foundation and others join together to own the L.A. Times.’”

Forbes pegged Broad’s net worth at $6.7 billion back in September, so even if he’s been pole-axed since then, he’ll still be able to buy the paper without breaking a sweat.

But unless Broad is going to convince his fellow gazillionaires to adopt papers throughout the country, this strategy won’t let the industry off the hook.

Tribune Co. has scrapped plans to put the Tribune Tower up for sale because of cratering real estate prices and the company’s late-year bankruptcy protection filing.

The media giant hired brokers last summer to sell the landmark tower as well as the Los Angeles Times’ headquarters complex, known as Times Mirror Square, and had hoped to get marketing materials to prospective investors early this year. But the moribund real estate investment sales market prompted the company to shelve those plans, says Stephanie Pater, Tribune’s director of real estate.”

Easy to see why prospective buyers might be wary of taking on close to a million square feet of office space when the primary tenant is a newspaper with uncertain prospects.

So what does that mean for the New York Times Co.’s (NYT) effort to wring much needed cash out of its HQ? The company announced its plans to raise up to $225 million via a sale-leaseback of its Times Square building in early December. But we haven’t heard a peep about it since.

No news to report so far, says spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, via email. “There’s no update. We continue to actively pursue a sale-leaseback on our new headquarters.”

So. Anyone interested? The Times has up to 828,000 square feet to dispose of, according to the company’s latest 10-K.

[Image Credit: sheliaellen]

If you’re at all interested in sports and business, it’s worth a quick read–Cuban has a nice touch at the keyboard, and really, how many other billionaires can you describe that way?

But for the time-pressed, here’s the upshot: Given that the Zell’s Tribune Company has turned into a nightmare for Zell, that price should come down, which seems to be Cuban’s thinking here:

So when it came down to it, I did what I thought was the only smart thing to do. I asked for an extension. I knew that if they got the money they wanted for the team, well my bid was not going to be high enough anyway. If they didnt, or the other bidders couldnt come up with their money, they would come back to me.

I’m still waiting.”

Much of that debt belongs to big banks, of course–J.P. Morgan (JPM) has more than $1 billion by itself. But Tribune (TXA) owes lots (though much smaller amounts) of money to lots of media companies, too–mostly dollars that the company’s TV stations owe various studios.

Here’s who’s on the hook:

• Time Warner’s (TWX) Warner Bros. Television: $23.7 million
• News Corp.’s (NWS) Twentieth Television: $8.1 million
• Disney’s (DIS) Buena Vista Entertainment: $6.2 million
• GE’s (GE) NBCU Domestic TV: $4.9 million
• Sony’s (SNE) Sony Pictures Television: $2.2 million
• Nielsen Media Research: $1.9 million
• Viacom’s (VIA) Paramount Pictures: $1.69 million

Here’s the complete filing (click button on top right to enlarge):
Tribune’s Bankruptcy Filing

Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and a host of other media properties, has hired the Lazard investment bank and law firm Sidley Austin to try to stave off a Chapter 11 filing, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report. But that may not be enough: The WSJ says owner Sam Zell, who took on some $8 billion in debt to buy the company last year, is preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing “as soon as this week.”

Tribune’s problems are well documented and are similar to every other newspaper–including the New York Times (NYT), as well as papers owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns this Web site, as ad dollars, revenue and readers are all moving rapidly to the Web. In addition, Tribune is particularly debt-laden: It owes $1 billion in interest payments this year, has another $500 million payment due next June, and may already be violating debt covenants that limit the amount of money it can borrow.

Tribune tends to receive special attention from us media types because of the size of the company and the prominence of its publications, but also because Sam Zell gives good quote. He’s generated plenty of them since he bought the company, and most of them come back to the same theme: He bought the newspapers to make a profit, not because he’s enamored of newspapers. And he holds a visible contempt for journalists who worry about the future of journalism.

Here’s a sampling:

Zell at Quadrangle’s kind-of-off-the-record FourSquare gathering earlier this fall:

If you don’t want to be a charitable trust, then you’ve got to focus on producing a return for investors’ capital, and it’s just that simple. It worked in the old days because you could be a public trust and you could do well for your shareholders because you had a monopoly, and monopolies are wonderful. I mean, I think competition is terrific, particularly for all those guys out there. Me? I like monopolies. I’m just sorry I waited 60 years to get into the newspaper industry because the 40 I missed were great.”

And here’s Zell addressing the staff of his Orlando Sentinel in January 2008. Warning–one bit of colorful muttering at the very end of this:

And who knows? Maybe John Chambers, Steve Ballmer and Brian Roberts will indeed say something important today and tomorrow at Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference. Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli is speaking too. He might have something newsworthy to say.

But you are unlikely to read about it.

That’s because there’s no press allowed at the private equity shop’s annual conference, which starts this afternoon at New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Or rather, there’s some press at the event. But they’ll be on stage. And they won’t be telling their readers and listeners what they saw and heard.

CNBC’s David Faber, Becky Quick and Maria Bartiromo, for instance, will be moderating panels over the next few days. So will the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin. And network TV news bigshots Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos and Brian Williams will answer questions themselves (Portfolio’s Matt Cooper will be moderating that one).

Am I crabby because I asked (nicely) and couldn’t get in myself? Nah. It’s Quadrangle’s event, and they can run it any way they want. But it does look like a pretty good gathering of worthies. Maybe I’ll park myself in the Plaza’s lobby and see if I can bump into some of them.

Want to join me? Here’s the agenda for next two days:

Tuesday 11/11
2:00 PM WELCOME
Joshua L. Steiner (Quadrangle)

ONE ON ONE WITH JOHN CHAMBERS (Cisco)
Moderated by Jim Citrin (Spencer Stuart)

WHO DO YOU TRUST: INFORMATION AND NEWS IN AN  OPEN WORLD
Tom Glocer (Thomson Reuters), Nancy McKinstry (Wolters Kluwer) and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook)
Moderated by David Faber (CNBC)

ALL ABOUT WIRELESS
Jean-Bernard Lévy (Vivendi), Naguib Sawiris (Orascom Telecom) and Ben Wolff (Clearwire)
Moderated by Steven Rattner

4:15 PM BREAK

GOING IT ALONE IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
Philippe Dauman (Viacom), Charlie Ergen (EchoStar) and Robert Kotick (Activision)
Moderated by Becky Quick (CNBC)

GLOBAL E-COMMERCE: $500 BILLION AND GROWING
Barry Diller (IAC) and Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten)
Moderated by Steve Hasker (McKinsey)

6:15 PM COCKTAIL RECEPTION
Grand Ballroom Foyer
The Plaza

Wednesday 11/12
8:30 AM WELCOME
ONE ON ONE WITH STEVE BALLMER (Microsoft)
Moderated by Ken Auletta (The New Yorker)

INNOVATION AND THE NEXT BIG IDEA
Jean-François Decaux (JC Decaux) Robert Stephens (Geek Squad founder?) and Jim Wiatt (William Morris)
Moderated by Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times)

A CONVERSATION WITH SAM ZELL (Equity Group, Tribune Co.)
Moderated by Joanne Lipman (Portfolio)

10:00 AM BREAK

COOP-ER-TITION: A CONVERSATION WITH PETER CHERNIN (News Corp.) AND BRIAN ROBERTS (Comcast)
Moderated by Ken Auletta

REBUILDING A BRAND FROM THE TOP DOWN
Dan Hesse (Sprint) and Robert Nardelli (Chrysler)
Moderated by Maria Bartiromo

NOON Concluding Luncheon
CAMPAIGN 2008: IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND BEHIND THE SCENES
Katie Couric (CBS), George Stephanopoulos (ABC) and Brian Williams (NBC)
Moderated by Matt Cooper (Portfolio)

[Image Credit: PinkMoose]