Sam Zell thinks Tribune will exit bankruptcy

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: Sam Zell: 'It's reasonable to assume' Tribune Co. will exit bankruptcy in first half of year : : Sam Zell, chairman of Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co., told CNBC on Wednesday that he didn't know when the media company will emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but "it's reasonable to assume that it will come out probably in the first half of this year." : Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008 because of the debt taken on a year earlier, when Zell took the company private. : "I would tell you that the Tribune is doing really well," Zell said at the 9:40 mark in the video interview with Maria Bartiromo above. "I think that an awful lot of the steps that the management of this company has taken to change the model, to reduce costs, to make the operations more efficient have all been coming through. So I'm very optimistic about the future of the company." : : It has proved difficult to predict when Tribune Co. will come out of Chapter 11. : Zell told Bloomberg Television in October that "with some reasonable luck," it might be early 2010. In July, he told CNBC's Bartiromo he suspected it might be "sometime between now and maybe as early as the end of" 2009. He told Bloomberg Television in May he was hopeful it would happen "relatively shortly." : But, as Zell told Bloomberg Television in April, Tribune Co ran into the difficulties it did because he "was too optimistic in terms of the newspapers' ability to preserve" their margins. : "I obviously don't know when it will come out" of bankruptcy, Zell said Wednesday. "But I think that it's reasonable to assume that it will come out probably in the first half of this year. Maybe if negotiations (with creditors) go easier, maybe even as the soon as the end of the first quarter."

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