Signing Off at XM

Radio Innovator To Try His Hand At Tribune Co.

Ten years ago, Lee Abrams helped revolutionize radio. Now, he's hoping to do the same to journalism.

Abrams, the creative heart and soul of XM Satellite Radio since its 1998 founding in Washington, is leaving to help retool the struggling Tribune Co.

He will be the chief innovation officer for Tribune, based in his hometown of Chicago, the company said yesterday. In the newly created job, Abrams will attempt to develop strategies and business plans for the company's newspapers, television stations and online properties.

In an interview yesterday, Abrams said he has been thinking about the news industry as analogous to American music in 1955, just before rock-and-roll exploded.

"Over the past couple of years, I've been fascinated with the concept of news and information as being the new rock-and-roll," Abrams said. "There had always been music, but rock-and-roll took it to a whole new level, broke the rules, wrote a whole new playbook."

Abrams, 55, said news and information can undergo a similar revolution with creative leadership. Abrams has a long history as a radio and music innovator but has no experience in journalism. He did not offer any hints yesterday of ideas he has for Tribune's newspaper, television and Internet properties.

Abrams was hired at Tribune by longtime friend and radio veteran Randy Michaels, a former Clear Channel executive, putting two radio lifers near the top of a sprawling media company that owns only one radio station.

In addition to WGN radio, Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday and other papers, as well as 23 television stations, a television studio and the Chicago Cubs. (Abrams is a fan of the Cubs' South Side rivals, the White Sox.) Last year, a boardroom revolt forced the company onto the sales block. Tribune ended up going private in an employee-ownership plan devised by commercial real estate billionaire Sam Zell, who is now Tribune's chief executive and chairman.

"Lee is the most formidable creative thinker in the media business today," Michaels said in a statement.

Tribune is laboring under $13 billion of debt incurred in Zell's takeover plan and battling declining advertising revenue, which is cutting into the cash flow needed to pay down the debt. Zell has been visiting his business units and addressing employees in his blunt, often profane, style.

Abrams, by comparison, is a genial legend in the radio industry, credited with inventing the "album-oriented rock" format on FM. At XM, he dreamed up more than 100 of the music channels. Outsize and spontaneous, he urged deejays and programmers to create a smart, fresh sound for the commercial-free channels and to resist hoary FM tropes, such as "two-for Tuesdays."

Former XM operations manager Dave Logan once said of Abrams: "Lee decides we need to land the plane backwards at Reagan National while the sky turns green. It's my job to make it happen."