That goes to show you what they say about assuming things.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday , and we subsequently confirmed , that News Corp isn’t going to chase Newsday after all. Instead, it’s pulling its $580 million bid, paving the way for Cablevision to likely take over its fellow Long Island media outlet. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman is in the race still as far as we know, but it’s hard to see how Tribune will take his $580 million bid when Cablevision has a $70 million sweetener on top of that.

Why? Apparently the economics were unjustifiable. What could that mean? The short list: Tribune’s quarterly financial results, which came out late Friday, show the company continuing to lose advertising revenue at its newspapers; media ownership laws might make it tough for Murdoch to take the paper yet keep his New York-area television broadcast licenses; and finally, a bid higher than $650 million is already a higher valuation for a newspaper than most sensible financial folks see as feasible.

That didn’t seem to bother Murdoch before. Here’s what he said on the News Corp earnings call (reproduced from our earlier blog entry ):

No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail. Just be patient for a couple of days (inaudible). We’re certainly not in the business of getting into an auction here …

We’re hoping to wrap it up within the next week. And I don’t mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days … It takes two to agree. But we’re at a pretty advanced stage. I’ll just leave it at that at the moment.

Here’s what he subsequently said at the Time 100 dinner later that week, according to the New York Observer (whose owner Jared Kushner also was interested in bidding, though a source close to Kushner Properties told us recently that he has no idea what he wants to do about a bid right now — we’re guessing nothing):

“Yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty,” he told The Observer. “I was telling the truth, but you don’t know until …”

Until Saturday.

The latest development: The Wall Street Journal reports that Cablevision is planning to bid as much as $650 million for the Long Island daily, which likely catapults it ahead of other bidders like News Corp, which owns the New York Post, and Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns the Daily News.

Cablevision’s bid could come within two days, the report said, adding that it was unclear whether whether Cablevision is working with New York Observer owner Jared Kushner in its offer. Beyond Cablevision’s cable assets, it owns the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.

The New York Times offered a different view. It, too, said Cablevision is preparing a bid, but it reported that the owners of the New York Observer have dropped out of the race.

Cablevision? Zuckerman? New York Observer? News Corp? What’s going on here?

These are smart, successful media companies and executives, so they must know something. Indeed, the New York Times reported that people briefed on its finances says that Newsday last year generated more than $80 million in income and about $500 million in revenue.

And it is, after all, the key paper in a relatively affluent area.

But get this: The New York Times also reports that some executives at companies interested in Newsday “learned over the last month that its printing, trucking and subscription operations were more troubled and inefficient than they knew. Paradoxically, that has persuaded them that the paper was worth more than they initially thought.”

Go figure.

Keep an eye on:

• With time running out a self-imposed deadline in contract talks with actors, major Hollywood studios say the two sides remained far from a deal and that excessive union demands are to blame (Reuters)
• Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, on Thursday posted a fall in first-quarter net profit as it lost basic video subscribers because of fierce competition from phone and satellite companies (Reuters)
• Microsoft indicated a willingness to up its bid for Yahoo to $33 per share, but Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has also appeared ready to walk away from the deal altogether if need be, the Wall Street Journal reports , quoting people with knowledge of the situation. It reported that Microsoft’s board met Wednesday without reaching a decision.
• Talk at the 2008 leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies centered on politics and the economy (The New York Times)

(Photo: Reuters)