What makes Norman Pearlstine cranky? Not getting his daily fix of media website paidContent.org.

The Carlyle Group advisor and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief, was lobbed a question about what he feels crucial to read every day,  after speaking at the Argyle Executive Forum Leadership in Media conference in New York.

“I must say that the one thing I’ve got very cranky if I don’t get is Rafat Ali’s
paidContent.org,” Pearlstine said, referring to the website started by Ali in 2002. “I think he does, with a relatively small staff, a remarkable job of pulling together coverage of what’s going on in new media and a fair amount of traditional media. If there’s one thing every day I look for that’s it.”  

That doesn’t mean newspapers are done for though – although they won’t generate the margins they used to before the rise of the Internet, Pearlstine said during the conference.

“With the very quick development of the Net, newspaper margins really just went south very quickly,” he said. “They remain viable businesses, they remain capable of generating consistent cashflow, but they are not going to have the kinds of margins again that they’ve had in the past. ”

Presumably that’s because Pearlstine can’t take his eyes off paidContent…

(Photo: Reuters)

Sprint Nextel shareholders looking for a shake-up at the struggling wireless company got their wish on Wednesday, as it announced a $14.5 billion joint venture with Clearwire  centered on next-generation WiMax broadbrand. The joint venture will be about 51 percent owned by Sprint, 27 percent by existing Clearwater shareholders, and about 22 for new investors — including Intel, Google, Time Warner and Comcast.  WiMax is designed to blanket entire cities with wireless Web access at speeds up to five times faster than traditional wireless networks, but it is a largely unproven technology.

Carl Icahn may not be quite done with Motorola. The activist investor,  who won two seats on the board and helped pressure the company to split off its cell phone division, raised the stake owned by him and his affiliates to 7.6 percent, according to a regulatory filing released Wednesday. Icahn and affiliates owned 6.4 percent in March.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group shares will start trading in the United States this week, but Wall Street is not welcoming back the soft drink maker with open arms. “When issued” shares debuted last Monday at $29 but fell 11 percent by Friday, closing at $25.80. Analysts are skeptical about prospects for the company, which lacks its own popular beverages in the sports and energy drink segments and gets most of its sales from the United States, where sales of traditional soft drinks are slipping.

Other deals of the day:

* Irish exploration company Providence Resources said it had agreed to buy a portfolio of oil and gas assets in the Gulf of Mexico from Triangle Oil and Gas Inc for $67.5 million.

* A Philippine business clan, the Gokongweis, and Morgan Stanley have expressed interest in buying a 40 percent stake owned by Saudi Aramco in oil refiner Petron Corp, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes said.

* Nippon Oil Corp said state-run China National Petroleum Corp is considering taking a 49 percent stake in the Japanese refiner’s Osaka refinery.

* French engineering firm Alstom is still keen on forging a tie-up with state-owned nuclear reactors maker Areva, Alstom Chief Executive Patrick Kron said.

* Airbus scrapped talks to sell two French factories to supplier Latecoere, bowing to the global credit crisis for the second time in a month after a similar sale collapsed in Germany.

* Private equity firm Nordic Capital will again extend its offer to buy all shares in Nordic IT services company TietoEnator, until May 16 from May 9, it said.

Christian video site GodTube has been blessed with a $30 million funding round from hedge fund GLG Partners, according to a report by paidContent.org, valuing the company at a whopping $150 million.

GodTube, billed by the L.A. Times as a “who’s who of U.S. Christianity,” has been racking up the page views with a “holy trinity” of user-generated video, social networking and a live webcasting service known as The Godcaster that allows churches to stream sermons and other events. In the same article, former CBS executive and GodTube CEO Chris Wyatt calls his site “Jesus 2.0″.

As paidContent notes, video startups like Metacafe and Veoh consume huge amounts of expensive bandwidth and so must raise large amounts of money. Nevertheless, it called GLG’s investment “ungodly big.”

Photo: GodTube.com

Cox Enterprises, the parent company of Cox Newspapers and cable company Cox Communications, is buying online advertising firm Adify for at least $300 million — not a bad multiple on revenues of $7 million in 2007 and an expected $35 million this year, according to paidContent.org.

“By any standards, it is a very rich deal,” paidContent’s Rafat Ali wrote. Adify creates custom online ad platforms for customers like the Guardian and Forbes. Reuters announced a deal with Adify in January to create an ad-supported network of small- to medium-sized publishers in areas like personal finance and football.

peHUB’s Dan Primack notes that it’s a “big day for Adify backer US Venture Partners, whose latest fundraising drive has been met with lukewarm enthusiasm.” Venture capital backers, which also included Venrock, NBC’s Peacock Equity fund and Time Warner, had invested about $27 million in Adify.

The Clear Channel Communications court hearing on Thursday brought no resolution to the battle over the $20 billion buyout of the radio station operator, but it did provide some heated words and enlightening emails.

Private equity firms Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners sued the banks — Citigroup Inc, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, and Wachovia Corp — to force them to fund the buyout of Clear Channel.

The private equity buyers contend the banks balked at providing financing after credit markets deteriorated last year. The buyout firms filed lawsuits in both New York and Texas, seeking to force the banks to fund the deal. The private equity firms rejected the banks’ offer on Tuesday to settle the dispute through binding arbitration.

Mark Hansen, a lawyer for the private equity firms, said the bankers “cooked up a set of loan documents that are nuclear, draconian and punitive” in an attempt to void the contract.

Projecting some emails onto a screen, Hansen highlighted a series of loan conditions that grew increasing onerous over time, including one that insisted the private equity firms could not use their own cash to repay the debt.

“Ah, there will be war.” one bank executive told another in an e-mail..

Hansen told the judge, “They want to lose the war. They want to lose the deal….They want the deal to blow-up.”

The Clear Channel battle promises to continue into May.

New York State Supreme Court Judge Helen Freedman did not indicate when she would rule on the banks’ request to dismiss the lawsuit. A May 5 trial date in the case may be delayed, the judge said.

“Don’t look too forward to May 5,” she said. “I might have to extend it a few days after.”

Stay tuned.

(Additional reporting by Leslie Gevirtz)

They say the early bird gets the worm. But if you’re a business reporter for a national broadsheet, getting to the office before 8 a.m. can be a real hardship.

While waiting on hold for JPMorgan Chase officials to begin their 8 earnings call, Scribbler A was shooting the breeze with her rival, Scribbler B (Names withheld to protect the innocent).

After some shop talk, the two talked about how they deal with such early assignments.

A - Are you in the office or are you home?

B (sounding tired) - No, I’m in the office. I actually came in this morning.

A - You usually don’t?

B - No, I normally call in from home.

A - I always come in.

B - Really?

A - Yeah. It’s four times a year. You know? It’s easier.”

Egads! We should all have it so tough…

Last week, an “anti-collusion” deadline expired, allowing wireless carriers that participated in a recent FCC airwaves auction to weigh mergers. That could open the door for companies such as MetroPCS and Leap Wireless to reconsider merger talks.

In September, MetroPCS made an unsolicited bid to acquire Leap for about $5.3 billion. Leap said the price was too low, but it was open to discussions. MetroPCS withdrew its offer in November, saying it was unable to “engage Leap in meaningful negotiations.”

Leap Wireless said it maintains its long-held stance: “We think there could be merit to a combination with MetoPCS,” but it will continue focusing on its own business and launching in new markets, it said. MetroPCS was not immediately available to comment.

Low-cost wireless service company MetroPCS on Monday posted better-than-expected growth in customers despite the weak economy. Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery said he expects both MetroPCS and Leap “to continue to take market share as they expand coverage.”

“Investors will also focus on industry consolidation potential particularly in the wake of the end of the FCC’s anti-collusion rules expiring last week,” Flannery said in a research report.

Last week, UBS analyst John Hodulik also noted the April 3 anti-collusion deadline. “We believe merger talks could resume between Metro and Leap at that time. We continue to believe a merger between the two companies is likely given similar business models and potential for synergies,” Hodulik said in a research report.

Despite that public spat and Leap’s rejection of MetroPCS’s overture, analysts have speculated that the two companies would eventually combine. Stay tuned.

A deal to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team was originally supposed to be clinched last year. That’s slowly slipped and now some fear it could even take till after the 2008 baseball season before its owner Tribune finds a new owner for the loveable losers.

To be sure, there’s a lot of activity going on behind the scenes, with talks to sell Wrigley Field to Illinois state moving forward. But the complexities involved mean it’ll likely be months before a deal for all the assets — the field, the team and a stake in a sports TV network - is sorted out. 
    
The flip side is that for real estate tycoon Sam Zell, who led the $8.2 billion buyout of Tribune, it doesn’t matter much. Since Tribune is now a privately owned company, it doesn’t have the pressures of quarterly deadlines and vocal shareholders.
    
However, the pressure is at an all-time high for the Cubs team, which is trying to win its first World Series title in 100 years.  
    

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc Chief Executive Mel Karmazin said on Wednesday he hoped U.S. regulators would rule by the end of March on the satellite radio company’s proposed merger with rival XM Satellite Radio Inc.

Speaking at the Bear Stearns 21st Annual Media Conference, Karmazin said he “took heart” about recent comments by U.S. Federal Communication Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, who indicated that his agency aimed to rule on the deal by the end of March.

Shares of the satellite radio companies immediately jumped on hopes the deal could actually close soon. The stocks had been under pressure amid investors’ fears the deal could get blocked by regulators.

Shares of Sirius, whose programming includes “shock jock” Howard Stern and NASCAR auto racing, hit a high of $2.95 and traded at $2.86, up 11 cents, or 4 percent. Shares of XM, whose programming features Oprah Winfrey and Major League Baseball, hit a high of $12 and traded at $11.58, up 49 cents, or 4.4 percent in afternoon trading.

Karmazin’s predictions on timing, however, may prove false since the companies have been wrong before. The satellite radio companies previously predicted that regulators would sign off on their their proposed $4.2 billion merger by the end of 2007.

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc Chairman Gary Parsons was less specific than Karmazin when he spoke at the Bear Stearns conference. He merely said he was confident the regulatory review was moving forward “in a timely manner.”

The deal, which was announced on Feb. 20, 2007, must meet certain standards, such as being in the public interest and not harming competition, as some critics have claimed.

“Clearly if there was a big problem with the merger, it wouldn’t take the (regulators) this long to figure it out. Either you believe we compete with a whole bunch of audio choices or you think there’s a distinct market called satellite radio,” Karmazin said.

Phillip Zane, an antitrust lawyer with Baker Donelson PC, said “the market definition is crucial as it is in any antitrust case. If the market is only satellite radio, then the parties have a problem because they’re the only satellite radio.”

The Department of Justice appeared to have all of the information it needed on the deal, but the companies were having active discussions with the FCC, Karmazin said. Talks with the FCC had recently accelerated, he said.

Unless the DOJ sued to stop the proposed merger, the deal could close immediately after the FCC ruled, Karmazin said.

Still, the DOJ would be wary about bringing a case to block the deal unless it was sure it would prevail, Zane said.

“The market’s changed a lot just since the merger’s been announced,” Zane said.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington)
(PHOTO: Reuters)

It’s hard to think of venture capitalists giving up their peaceful deal-gathering and startup-hunting activities to participate in the kind of rabble-rousing that is the hallmark of activist investors.

But two venture capitalists are playing prominent roles in two ongoing battles — one is a full-on proxy fight and the other is threatening to turn into one.

In January, a consortium led by hedge fund JANA Partners locked horns with CNET Networks to oust the online media company’s board and nominate its own candidates. The consortium’s nominees include Santo Politi, founder of the Boston-based VC firm Spark Capital. Politi is supposed to have been instrumental in spearheading the dissidents’ approach, according to Thomson Financial’s editor-at-large and PE Week Wire creator Dan Primack. A recent meeting between the two sides aimed at avoiding a proxy battle didn’t get anywhere, a source told Reuters.

Meanwhile, hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, which has amassed an impressive stake in the New York Times Co. in recent weeks, also began fighting in January, though the formal proxy was only filed last month. It too has a slate of nominees for election to the Times’ board, among them, Allen Morgan, a managing director at the storied Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield Fund.

Morgan, a lawyer by training, has remained mostly quiet, except to emphasize his passive play in the activist game. “Because of my longstanding interest in, and experience with, Internet and new media companies, I was approached by a group of stockholders of the New York Times Company to see if I would agree to become a nominee… and I’ve agreed,” Morgan wrote on his blog, www.allensblog.typepad.com,on Jan. 29.

Photo credit: Reuters file