BELO TO GIVE ONE-FIFTH SHARE FOR PAPERS.

Belo Corp. said on Friday that it would complete the spin-off of its newspaper operations from its television business effective Feb. 11, with each holder of a single share of Belo Corp. getting one-fifth of a share of the newly constituted newspaper business, A.H. Belo Corp.

The record date for distribution of the new company's stock will be Jan. 25 and the company expects the shares to be distributed on Feb. 8, with trading in the new company starting the following Monday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AHC.

The Feb. 8 distribution date is tentative, pending a ruling from the Internal Revenue Service that the spin-off qualifies as a tax-free deal. The company said it expects to receive the ruling before the end of the month.

Under this distribution, the company expects A.H. Belo to have about 17.6 million shares of Series A stock and about 2.9 million shares of Series B stock. The latter is the voting control shares owned mostly by the heirs of George Dealey, the co-founder of the company and are not traded.

"This is an exciting step in Belo's strategic plan to enhance shareholder value by creating separate television and newspaper companies that will be very focused and responsive to changing industry dynamics," said Robert Decherd, chairman and chief executive officer of Belo Corp. Following the spin-off, Decherd will become the non-executive chairman of Belo and the chairman and chief executive of A.H. Belo.

Following the spin-off, Belo said it plans to pay an annual dividend of about 30 cents per share, while A.H. Belo will pay a dividend of about 20 cents per share; most recently, Belo Corp.'s annual dividend has been about 50 cents per share.

In other Belo news, the company said last Wednesday that it has forged an agreement with Yahoo! News to provide local news video from its TV stations to the web portal.

Yahoo will host "dozens of local news video clips each day," the company said, in each of the 13 markets where it has TV stations.

"Video usage is one of the fastest growing areas in the on-line space and Belo's television stations and Web sites produce some of the most compelling video in their respective markets," said Dunia Shive, president and chief operating officer of Belo.

Hmm. I had thought the split was going to be 50-50. Well, I guess since the TV business will be carrying all the debt (A.H. Belo will be essentially debt-free), this split is a little more fair. My guess is that all traditional ad-dependent media businesses are going to be depressed over the next few years and that in the long run this process isn't going to unlock any value.