Dallas-based Belo Corp. announced it is to split its print and broadcast television assets into two separate, publicly traded companies. The media company owns about 20 television stations and two regional cable television news channels, while its flagship newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, has been publishing since 1885. The company's newspapers will form a new company, AH Belo Corp. The name A.H. Belo Corp. was Belo's name from 1865 to 2001.

The decision was very well received on the Wall Street, as Belo shares jumped almost 20 percent.

A.H. Belo Corp will thus own Dallas Morning News and the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, an array of online businesses, The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, and other smaller papers. "I'm very optimistic about it," Press-Enterprise Publisher Ronald Redfern said. "I think splitting the businesses will allow the newspapers to focus on what they do best and the TV stations to focus on what they do best."

A.H. Belo will start off clean as the parent company will assume all current debt, which is somewhere over $1 billion. The spinoff is to be completed in the first quarter of 2008, pending regulatory approvals. "The decision to create separate television and newspaper companies recognizes the profound yet distinct changes occurring in these industries and the appeal of the separate businesses to discrete investor groups," said Belo Corp. chairman-CEO Robert Decherd, who will also become chairman, president and CEO of A.H. Belo Corp. after the spinoff, and he'll serve as non-exec chairman of Belo Corp. The CEO position at the TV company will be taken over by Dunia Shive, current president and chief operating officer of Belo Corp.

The newspaper-related operations will have about 3,800 workers and annual revenue of about $750 million, while the TV group has about 3,200 employees and generates annual revenue of more than $750 million. They chose to spin-off the newspapers to a new company rather than the other way around to eliminate the need for new TV licenses.

"We're tired of being on the defensive," Decherd added. "We think this is a way to get on offense and win in both businesses."

Belo Corp., which can be traced back to 1842 with the introduction of The Daily News in Galveston, is apparently the oldest continually-operated corporation in the state of Texas.