Freedom News Service with Tribune reports

A federal judge Tuesday approved Freedom Communications reorganization plan, giving a green light for it to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of this month.

The action moves the media company, parent of The Tribune and TribTown.com, out from under 58 percent of its debt — from $775 million to $325 million. The company’s unsecured creditors will share in $32.2 million compared with the $5 million Freedom originally offered.

“I’m a little relieved that it’s all done,” Freedom Chief Financial Officer Mark McEachen said.

“Now we’re on to the business of running the business so we can get this distraction behind us,” McEachen added.

Freedom interim Chief Executive Officer Burl Osborne said the bankruptcy “will give the company a new balance sheet, a fresh start, if you will.”

The company’s plan calls for it to more than double its pretax earnings to $98 million within four years. Newspaper analysts predicted the new investors/owners of the company are likely to hold on to it for a minimum of two years and as much as six or seven years as they wait for the market for media concerns to improve.

“This is graduation day,” federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Brendan Shannon said moments before he approved Freedom’s plan. “It is not lost upon the court that this was a significantly contested matter.”

Freedom filed for bankruptcy last Sept. 1, and after some contentious negotiations with its unsecured creditors, the company reached an agreement that led to an overwhelmingly positive vote for its reorganization plan. The exact vote of the creditors was not disclosed at the hearing.

The company will emerge from bankruptcy with Osborne at the helm and a new board of directors that for the first time will not include a member of the founding Hoiles family. R.C. Hoiles, an Ohio native, formed a media group that later became Freedom Communications. It bought The Tribune in 1973 from the Thomas W. Conner family.