Robertson Cancels Plan to Purchase Ailing UPI : Media: The televangelist says he would have to put $31 million into the wire service. It may close as early as Friday.

Barring a last-minute rescue, United Press International will be forced to shut down or drastically curtail operations this weekend in the wake of televangelist Pat Robertson’s sudden withdrawal of his $6-million buyout offer.

With the conservative religious broadcaster out of the picture, “someone has to come in by Friday,” said Cary Samowitz, a lawyer for UPI’s creditors, who are owed $60 million in the historic wire service’s bankruptcy proceedings. “And Friday is going to be cutting it close.”

Robertson, who had pumped in $300,000 to keep UPI going the past 30 days as he examined its books, said at a Washington news conference that the economics of continuing to operate UPI as a full-service news operation “just don’t seem to make a great deal of sense.”

The wire service “I think closes down on Friday if there’s not some source of operating income,” said Richard Seltzer, attorney for the Wire Service Guild, which represents most employees. “Employees don’t work unless they get paid.”

Lawyers for UPI said the agency was negotiating with other potential buyers, but company officials weren’t optimistic. “We’re back to square one. . . . The prospect of finding another buyer is not terrific,” Executive Editor Steven Geimann said.

Robertson was the only bidder for all of UPI at a bankruptcy court auction last month. At a hearing in New York yesterday, his attorneys offered to buy the UPI name and certain other assets for $500,000.

But the religious broadcaster’s much lower bid was spurned by attorneys for UPI’s creditors, who were angry that Robertson’s earlier agreement to buy the company had prevented them from seeking other buyers for the 85-year-old operation.

“What we lost, during the past 30 days, was the opportunity to find someone to buy the 500-employee enterprise as a going concern,” said Dennis O’Dea, a partner in the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate, which represents UPI’s creditors.

“What this shows, once again, is that sellers in bankruptcy proceedings have very little leverage. It’s too easy for the buyer to walk away,” he said, citing Delta Air Line’s abandonment of its deal to help revitalize bankrupt Pan American World Airways as another example.

This is not the first time that things have come down to the wire for UPI, which broke the news of shots being fired at President John F. Kennedy’s limousine in 1963 and boasts such illustrious alumni as Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Harrison Salisbury.

The company has been plagued by losses and has been through a succession of owners and two bankruptcy filings the past decade. Its payroll has been slashed from 1,850 to the current level of 500, and it has been losing subscribers around the world.

Robertson, a political conservative who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and is best known as the host of “The 700 Club,” a talk show produced by his Christian Broadcasting Network, proclaimed himself a “white knight” when he appeared suddenly and made his deal to acquire the bankrupt wire service.

But Wednesday he told a different story. “It is with great personal regret that I say that the economics just don’t, for us, make sense,” he said.

Robertson said it would have been extraordinarily expensive--”at least $31 million in 18 months”--to upgrade UPI’s news delivery system and beef up staffing to provide a competitive, international operation. All without assurance of a profit, he added.

“I mean, our own news department here in Washington has just canceled UPI to go with AP (Associated Press) because it wasn’t broad enough and deep enough to serve our needs,” Robertson said, referring to his CBN operation.

UPI was founded as United Press in 1907 by publisher E. W. Scripps. It got its current name in a 1958 merger with the International News Service.