Sunday, July 27, 2014

Allbritton Looking Towards the Future

Now that Sinclair Broadcasting's $985 million deal with Allbritton has been approved by the FCC, Robert Allbritton is looking forward to the future of the properties under his control.  Allbritton is still the publisher of POLITICO nd owner of its parent, Capitol News Company, as well as its sister company, CapNY, publisher of Capital New York.  

In an article on POLITICO.com, Allbritton says the internet is the future:

“Hey it’s great to do a deal, but it’s kind of tough to walk away. I’ve been doing this 20 years personally, and you don’t walk away from that without some thoughts,” Robert Allbritton said in an interview. “It’s going to be a good business for a while to come, but man, I’m 45 and I don’t know if it’s going to be a good business for the rest of my life.”

Allbritton said Internet-based communications are the way things are headed.
“What you guys at POLITICO are doing is the future,” he said. “It’s just the way media is changing now, and man, is it changing fast.”

Allbritton pointed to the changes that have occurred at POLITICO as an example.

“We were a different company five years ago,” he said. “We didn’t have Pro. Most of the revenue came from the newspaper five years ago. We’re totally different now. The beautiful thing about what we’ve got is we’ve strangely been able to reinvent ourselves every two or three years.”

Politico reports the Sinclair/Allbritton deal should be complete by August 1st.