More on Tribune earnings

No bombshells in this morning's Tribune Co. conference call with analysts. As reported earlier, third-quarter net income was sharply higher, but that's only because of a one-time tax gain from those complicated Chandler partnerships that are being restructured. Knock that item out and the numbers are actually a bit lower than analysts expectations. By the way, the LAT's turbulent newsroom only vaguely came up when the Tribune honchos said that new publisher David Hiller was doing a fine job getting up to speed, meeting customers and LAT employees, etc. Nothing about Dean Baquet - and no concern expressed about the ongoing cost cuts eating into Tribune's editorial bone. I believe it was CEO Dennis FitzSimons who said that staffing (and he was talking about Tribune overall) was in "very, very good shape" compared with other newspapers.

Some other snippets: Overall ad revenue at the LAT was down 2 percent in the quarter (October has started off sluggishly, mostly because of soft business in national advertising). Retail was running flat (lost business from the shuttering of Robinsons-May was offset by all those huge Macy's ads in September). Overall revenue from movie ads fell 10 percent in the quarter and 17 percent year to date. The LAT has been especially hit by this ongoing slippage, the result of smaller ads, shorter run times and the studios' wanting to branch out into other vehicles. Also, they're still looking at the end of the year for those recommendations on a Tribune restructuring/sale/whatever to be presented to the board. Tribune stock is down a bit this morning.