photo of Scripps building in Cincinnati
Careers Investors

Price set for Scripps Trust public offering

April 24, 2003
 

CINCINNATI, Ohio – The Edward W. Scripps Trust’s public offering of 7 million shares of The E. W. Scripps Company’s Class A Common shares has been priced at $77.25 per share.The shares are being offered pursuant to a shelf registration statement filed with the SEC by the company on March 25, 2003. The trust is the controlling shareholder of The E. W. Scripps Company. The company will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares by the trust. The offering is being underwritten with Morgan Stanley as the lead manager and Merrill Lynch as co-manager. A written prospectus may be obtained from the underwriters. The Scripps Trust has advised the company that the decision to sell shares is in keeping with its long-term effort to diversify the trust’s assets. The trust’s most recent sale of Scripps Class A Common Shares was in the summer of 1998. The company’s Class A Common Shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SSP.” There is no active market for the company’s other class of stock – Common Voting.After the sale of these shares, the trust will own approximately 35.8 percent of the company’s outstanding 61.8 million Class A Common Shares and approximately 87.3 percent of the outstanding 18.4 million Common Voting Shares. Celebrating its 125th anniversary, The E.W. Scripps Company is a diverse media concern with interests in newspaper publishing, broadcast television, national television networks, interactive media and television-retailing. Scripps operates 21 daily newspapers, 10 broadcast TV stations, four cable and satellite television programming services and a home shopping network. All of the company’s media businesses provide content and advertising services via the Internet.Scripps also operates Scripps Howard News Service and United Media, which is the worldwide licensing and syndication home of PEANUTS and DILBERT.