The sides are drawn and the votes are being lined up. Will Fisher Communications (KOMOTV, KOMO1000, KVI, Star 101) continue to exist or be sold off?
The May 11 annual shareholders meeting may very well decide whether the 101-year-old Seattle company which began as a flour mill.
According to RBR, a radio trade site:
Dissident shareholder FrontFour Capital is nominating its own slate of candidates in an attempt to take control of the board and put the company up for sale. The four would join FrontFour’s David Lorber to constitute a majority on the board.
Fisher management is pushing for its own slate of four directors, whose election would leave Lorber as a one-vote minority voice.
Fisher is urging shareholders and beating the bushes for votes to rout the New York hedge fund's slate. In a letter to shareholders:
As of March 9, 2011, FrontFour owned approximately 2% of our outstanding common stock. If all four FrontFour nominees are elected to our Board of Directors, FrontFour’s nominees (including David A. Lorber) will constitute a majority of our Board of Directors.
RBR notes that bush-beating by both sides probably won't matter as much as the vote of Mario Gabelli, whose mutual funds own 27.8% of Fisher’s stock – far more than any other shareholder. He recently told a teevee interviewer that he would be willing to sell, but not at the price being offered by FrontFour-affiliated Huntingdon REIT.
Fisher got greedy, and went to Wall Street and got that ol' easy money. They binged and built a fancy high-tech building in downtown Seattle that's been a white elephant, (now for sale) and bought a bunch of small-town teevee stations that didn't pay and that they're now struggling to sell-off.
The New York money boyz are impatient. They want out with as much dough as they can squeeze.
Fuck Seattle. Bidness is bidness.
Who could expect more or different from Wall Street? More or different was expected of the hometown company who forgot who they were, where they came from, sold their souls, lost control.
(CEO Colleen "2x her annual salary plus optional bonuses" Brown)
We can't imagine why or how the Fisher management team, led by CEO Colleen Brown, is still employed. We're sure there's a gilded parachute all packed and ready, if the plane starts to go down.
It's more than sad... it's sickening.
This all depends on what Phelps Fisher does. The MSM loves going to him for a quote to what's on his mind.
Posted by: JimF | March 22, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Sounds like a sour grapes post from someone whose daughter was unceremoniously shown the door at KOMO-TV...
Posted by: John | March 22, 2011 at 03:42 PM
If everyone who was unceremoniously shown the door at Fisher wrote a sour grapes post on this blog, the internet would get clogged.
Posted by: Itchy | March 22, 2011 at 07:02 PM
She also successfully won a resolution . That seems to be your sour grapes.
Posted by: Coiler | March 22, 2011 at 07:55 PM
OT:
Driving home shortly after 7:00 pm I heard Curley talking about the WSU pot smoking issue. Turned the radio on a minute ago and IT IS THE SAME SHIT! What happened to live radio??????
Makes me want to smoke a bowl .....
Posted by: Dark & Stormy | March 22, 2011 at 08:54 PM
To answer your question, they are re-playing "The Best of Jon Curley."
Another night in which Curley is AWOL.
Posted by: JimF | March 22, 2011 at 09:03 PM
The Reckoning at the Plaza is indeed coming. One wonder's about the future of this very blog. With the dearth of local radio, why blog about it? It's feeling ....strained.
Posted by: Darksecretplace | March 23, 2011 at 07:20 AM
if that is an un-repainted wall sign for Fisher Flour, in an un-retouched photo, then it's amazing how vivid the colors still are on sign painting. "Blend's mah friend" as a slogan must have gone out at least by the sixties when the civil rights movement came in strong, so it has to be at least fifty years old, probably older. I'm saying that was taken somewhere around Chinatown , withthe Smith Tower in background.
Posted by: Tommy008 | March 23, 2011 at 09:33 AM
DSP still has that sick "faces of death" photo for his whatchamacallit. Other talk hosts actors, singers, etc come back from their overseas military service and integrate their experiences in a healthy way into theor personalities, as a subordinated, small piece of their whole persona. This guy builds his whole world around his military experiences. Kind of a diminishing market for your "type" on the air, ya finding, Sparky, in your job-hunting. Tom Leykis is already trumpeting the specific day date of the return of his show, in April 2012 , one day after his CBS contract ends, so he must have something aleady signed on the dotted line with a network.
Posted by: Tommy008 | March 23, 2011 at 10:10 AM
Have you considere ownign a high-end gun shop and shootin' range in Monroe, WA or Provo, Utah, Sparky? Not too much disffrent than your radio show - talking about weapons and bullet caliber to middle-aged white men for several hours a day
Posted by: Tommy008 | March 23, 2011 at 10:25 AM
hey , while i'm at it, talking smack, why doesn't Medved just move to Israel and join his son, at least one of his brothers and his father. i don't consider Medved to be a desirable citizen of our country. I would much rather that Israel has to put up with him than us nice Americans.
Posted by: Tommy008 | March 23, 2011 at 01:04 PM