In trying to rejuvenate the newspaper and television industry, Tribune Co. chairman and CEO Sam Zell is turning to radio.

Half a dozen veteran radio executives have been hired by Tribune, such as Lee Abrams as new chief innovation officer, and Randy Michaels, former radio chief for Clear Channel Communications, who recently had pinball machines and a jukebox installed at the company's corporate headquarters in Chicago.

Abrams says "experience in radio is helpful for media facing new competition" since radio had reinvented itself and prospered when TV became popular. He is bringing some of his motivational techniques to Tribune, such as a "cliché buzzer" to ring when colleagues offer tired ideas.

Zell may be putting more emphasis on the broadcasting side of Tribune, which "generates higher profit margins and doesn't face the same rapid falloff in advertising as the newspaper business," according to Wall Street Journal journalists Sam Schechner and Sarah McBride.

Tribune has already been merging the operations of its South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper and its Miami WSFL-TV station.

"This is indicative of the creative thinking of the new management," says Howard Greenberg, the Sun-Sentinel publisher and WSFL's general manager.

Zell also raised the possibility that the Los Angeles Times and Tribune's local KTLA-TV could also work more closely together. Local TV businesses have been doing better than newspapers partly because of advertising from the presidential election.

Source: The Wall Street Journal