The New York Times confirmed this morning that it’s looking to get rid of its stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team, something previously reported by a number of news outlets.

The Times could raise at least $200 million selling its stake, analysts have said, though it should be noted that selling anything these days — even part of a first class baseball organization — is no easy task.

Check back to MediaFile for more on the sale shortly.

Meanwhile, here’s a recap of the New York Times decline in quarterly results:

The Times’ fourth-quarter net income fell 48 percent to $27.6 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with $53 million, or 37 cents a share, in the quarter a year earlier.

Excluding a writedown related to the International Herald Tribune, its European newspaper, the Times reported earnings of 26 cents a share. The average analyst estimate was 27 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Revenue fell 10.8 percent to $772.1 million, beating the average Wall Street forecast of $761.1 million.

In the fourth quarter, advertising revenue fell 17.6 percent. Ad revenue at the news media group — which includes its namesake newspaper, The Boston Globe and other local papers throughout the United States — fell 18.4 percent.

Online revenue, including About and its newspaper websites, fell 2.9 percent to $92.5 million.

Keep an eye on:

• Only days before the National Football League’s championship game, Pepsi executives are still debating which advertisements they will run during NBC’s broadcast of the Super Bowl on Sunday, which will likely be viewed by nearly 100 million Americans (Reuters) 
• Union moderates fighting for control of the deeply splintered Screen Actors Guild on Monday ousted the hard-line chief negotiator they blame for months of stalled contract talks with Hollywood studios (Reuters)
• A cable channel from Paramount Pictures, MGM, and Lionsgate that is intended as a competitor to HBO and Showtime will be name Epix and wil launch online in May (New York Times)

(Photo: Reuters)

Clear Channel may be fighting its banks with guns blazing in a Texas court, but it’s singing a softer tune to Washington regulators.

The company told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that its pending $20 billion buyout by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners may not close, saying it wanted to caution the markets not to hope for an easy resolution.
    
The deal was supposed to close by March 31, but six banks who agreed to finance it have since balked as debt markets deteriorate. As far as Clear Channel is concerned, all the other closing conditions have been met.
(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Tom Cruise dined at a Beverly Hills hot spot with Viacom chief Sumner Redstone, who severed the actor’s long-running partnership with the company’s Paramount Pictures in 2006. Cruise is widely thought to want to renew the “Mission: Impossible” series, which Paramount has the rights to.
  (WSJ)
• WiMax could prove a bigger risk than its worth for top U.S. cable companies, especially as they plunk down cash in a tough economy for an unproven technology.
  (Reuters)
• David Marash, the most prominent American anchor on Al Jazeera English, has quit the 24-hour international news channel, citing an increased level of editorial control exercised by the channel’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
  (NYTimes)

(Photo: Reuters)