THE New York Observer, the salmon-colored weekly that carved out an audience among Manhattan’s elite, is quietly being shopped around.
Its circulation has stalled around the 45,000 level and it has always run in the red.
The task of getting it to break even has become even more difficult in recent years.
The two-year-old daily New York Sun is laying plans to become predominantly free.
Two freebie commuter dailies, amNew York and Metro, are also crowding the market, giving away hundreds of thousands of copies a day.
The Observer’s long time editor, Peter Kaplan, has been to England to seek a buyer and sources said this week he made an approach to “Bid ’em up” Bruce Wasserstein, the ex-Lazard boss whose media holdings include New York magazine and American Lawyer Media.
Wasserstein, who has signed on as an adviser to Carl Icahn in the battle over Time Warner, might seem to be a tad busy on the media front.
Kaplan, according to one source, is anxious to save the paper, where he developed a slew of young talented reporters who went on to bigger jobs elsewhere.
His most famous find was the “Sex and the City” column by Candice Bushnell that spawned the popular HBO series.
Despite its buzz, the weekly Observer has never made any money but it has always been bankrolled by Arthur Carter, who made a fortune as Sandy Weill‘s partner at the high-powered investment banking firm Carter, Berlind Potoma & Weill, which ultimately merged into Shearson Lehman Brothers.
Carter left Wall Street an extremely wealthy man and for a while was intrigued with media.
He founded the Observer, bought a 50 percent investment in the East Hampton Star that he has since sold back to the Ratray family, and once owned the Litchfield Times near his Connecticut estate.
He even sold the fabulous East Side townhouse that housed The Observer for most of its life, and moved the paper to less expensive digs on Broadway.
Still, losses in the past year were estimated to be around $2 million and Carter’s attention has waned as he has put more and more of his energy into his art sculptures, which have been shown professionally.
And as one insider noted, “Whenever you have a patron of a money-losing project, you don’t want him to get interested in another money-losing project.”
Carter, who was a frequent guest at the old Observer office, almost never appears at the new digs on 915 Broadway at 20th Street.
Still, there are signs his interest has not completely flagged.
His daughter, Mary Dixie Carter, has been working as the paper’s associate publisher for the past year and a half.
And Carter is believed to have a 10-year lease at the new offices, which he moved into in November 2004.
Neither Carter nor Kaplan returned calls seeking comment.
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As first reported in Media Ink last week, Mort Zuckerman has gone outside in a bid to bolster his executive ranks and hired Marc Kramer to be the new CEO of the Daily News.
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David Pecker, CEO of American Media, has a little breathing room.
The company which publishes the National Enquirer, Star and Men’s Fitness and Shape, was facing a $60 million repayment on its revolving credit agreement in April, and bondholders had been expressing concern about the “revolver.”
But late last evening, the company said it has hammered out some major refinancing with a syndicate of financial firms led by its principal bankers J.P. Morgan Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities.
Also engaged are Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and General Electric Capital Corporation as co-agents.
The company said its expects to replace the old revolving credit deal with a new $60 million revolving credit facility due in 2012 and $450 million term loan facility due in 2013.
“One hundred percent of the bank debt is being refinanced,” said Pecker, who expects to complete the transaction in late January.
The company has just under $1 billion in total debt including bonds.