Freedom Communications Won't Sell

By: (AP) The family that owns Freedom Communications Inc., a nationwide media firm that includes The Orange County Register, has reached a tentative agreement not to sell the company.

Instead, family members will explore ways to transfer "significant ownership" from the older to the younger generation, said Kirk Hardie, head of the Hoiles Family Council. "This is something that intrigued everybody enough to go forward researching it," Hardie said Sunday.

Details of the proposed stock transfers were to be worked out. The plan will be considered by company board members at a meeting Tuesday, Hardie said.

Forty-three adult descendants of company founder R.C. Hoiles met at a Costa Mesa hotel over the weekend to discuss options for unhappy shareholders who have complained about their inability to cash out their holdings.

Selling the company was a possibility favored by some, including board member Tim Hoiles, the founder's grandson. Independent analysts pegged the company's value at $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Tim Hoiles' attorney, San Francisco antitrust lawyer Joseph M. Alioto, said Sunday night that Hoiles consented to trying the new plan after members of the fourth generation promised they would try to buy him out.

Tim Hoiles owns 8.6% of the company and contends mismanagement has driven down his shares. He had threatened to sue family members. Hoiles agreed not to file suit pending implementation of the new approach, Alioto said.

But the attorney emphasized that if the new plan did not come together quickly, selling the company was still an option. "If this does not make it, the next in line is the sale of the company," Alioto said.

Hardie previously said the family was divided over whether to sell. Some favored it, others were opposed, and a larger group was taking a wait-and-see approach before the weekend meeting.

"The company is not for sale," board chairman R. David Threshie, who is married to R.C. Hoiles' granddaughter, said in a company statement. "We have agreed to explore ways to transfer significant ownership to the younger generation."

Tom Bassett, a fourth-generation Hoiles who proposed the stock transfer plan, said it would be six to 18 months before any transaction took place.

Privately held Freedom is the nation's fourth largest family-owned newspaper chain, according to newspaper analyst John Morton. It ranks behind Advance Publications Inc. (Newhouse), Hearst Corp., and Cox Newspapers Inc.

"The family shareholders are in agreement that this is an equitable and fair solution to move us forward," Rick Oncken, chairman of the Family Liquidity Committee, said in the statement.

R.C. Hoiles bought the Santa Ana Register in 1935. The Register has won three Pulitzer Prizes and has a circulation of 315,000. The paper is flagship of a group that includes The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Tribune papers in suburban Phoenix, among 28 daily newspapers, 37 weeklies, and eight television stations.

Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom is the 12th largest newspaper group in circulation, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.