Daily News Posts Quarterly $1.3-Million Operating Loss

The Daily News lost $1.3 million from its operations in the third quarter of 1989, compared with a $189,000 operating loss a year earlier, according to the newspaper’s parent company, Cooke Media Inc.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cooke Media said the Daily News’ revenue in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 rose 5%, to $27.8 million from $26.6 million. The company is owned by Jack Kent Cooke and his family.

Cooke Media also owns several cable television properties, for which it borrowed heavily, and the company’s total debt is more than $830 million. But Cooke has agreed to sell the cable systems piecemeal for a total of about $1.6 billion, and the sales are expected to net Cooke about $300 million.

As a result, Cooke Media now treats the cable systems as discontinued operations, so the quarterly revenue figures reported by Cooke Media now include just the Daily News.

During the third quarter, Cooke Media sold one cable system for a net gain of $70.4 million. That offset the Daily News’ and the cable systems’ operating losses and $25.3 million in interest payments on the debt, giving Cooke Media a net profit for the quarter of $40.3 million. In the same quarter a year earlier, Cooke Media lost $25.3 million.

For the first nine months of 1989, the Daily News had an operating loss of $2.5 million on revenue of $82.8 million, compared with a $769,000 operating loss on revenue of $79 million a year earlier.

But because of the debt payments, Cooke Media overall suffered a net loss of $13.5 million in the nine-month period, compared with a $75.2-million loss a year earlier.