Freedom Taps Broadcast Head as Chief Executive

Freedom Communications Inc., Irvine-based parent of the Orange County Register, on Thursday named the head of its broadcasting division as Freedom chief executive and president.

Alan J. Bell, a broadcasting executive who oversaw the company’s eight television stations, replaces Samuel C. Wolgemuth, who resigned Thursday under pressure from the Hoiles family, owner of Freedom Communications.

Wolgemuth, 59, who had served as CEO and president of Freedom since October 1999 and before that led the company’s nearly defunct magazine division, was blamed for millions of dollars in losses related to failed magazine ventures.

The appointment of Bell comes as the company is beset by turmoil and divisions among Hoiles family shareholders. Some family members wish to cash out some or all of their holdings through a transfer of ownership from the third generation of family members to the fourth generation.

Board members and shareholders said they wanted a new chief executive with more extensive media and business experience. Although the company’s performance has improved this year after a large loss last year, insiders and members of the Hoiles family say they think it could do even better with the right management.

Freedom Chairman R. David Threshie called Bell “an experienced and talented media manager who has spent his entire career in communications, media and broadcasting.”

Robin J. Hardie, a shareholder and fourth-generation family member, said she “looked forward to working with everyone to carve out a new path for the company.”

Dissident shareholder and director Tim Hoiles, a critic of Wolgemuth and his predecessor, James N. Rosse, a current board member and former Stanford University provost, said Bell would act as steward of Freedom’s assets.

“We had two people in a row who didn’t know what they were doing,” said Hoiles, a third-generation family member who is seeking to cash out his 8.6% stake in Freedom. “Now, we have somebody who does.”

At Freedom, Bell headed a broadcast division that included five CBS and three ABC network affiliates. Before joining Freedom in 1989, Bell served as president of the Lorimar Broadcast Group and as assistant general manager of WNEW-TV in New York and KTTV-TV in Los Angeles. He is a Boston native who attended Harvard Business School.

Bell said in a statement that he hoped to unify the company and “put everybody on the same page.”

“When this happens, and it will, we’ll reach new levels of both profitability and service to the millions of readers and viewers who depend on us,” Bell said.

The privately held firm--which also owns 28 daily newspapers and 37 weeklies and is the nation’s 12th-largest newspaper company--lost $110 million before taxes last year on sales of $803 million, according to sources familiar with the results. Write-offs for discontinued magazine and Internet operations accounted for most of the red ink. One of the magazines, a joint-venture fashion publication called Mode that targeted full-figured women, shut down in October.

In the first six months of this year, Freedom said it posted pre-tax profit of $23 million, contrasted with a $55-million loss in the same period a year earlier.

The company continues to grapple with how and whether the group of about 30 fourth-generation family members can buy out their elders. The family could sell shares though an initial public offering or in the private equity market, or sell a stake in the company directly to a outside party. No transaction is expected to be completed for six to 18 months.

Tim Hoiles, who has long maintained that an outright sale of the entire company would fetch more than any other option, has hinted that he would ratchet up the pressure if a buyout by the fourth generation could not be completed. He has threatened to sue his relatives if his demands to be bought out at a favorable price aren’t met.