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UBS and Credit Suisse First Boston
December 11, 2003

Dennis FitzSimons, President and CEO

We're happy to be here with you today to briefly review our 2003 accomplishments and take a look at our goals for 2004. Presenting with me today are Don Grenesko, our CFO, as well as Jack Fuller and Pat Mullen, presidents of our publishing and broadcasting groups.

Our 2003 results again demonstrate the strength of our media businesses. We publish 13 daily newspapers, own 26 television stations and operate a growing interactive business. By the way, our baseball team had a pretty good year, too. When you put it all together, it looks like this.

Last year in December we said the year would begin with a strong first half. It did; during that period, Tribune's consolidated revenues grew nearly 5%. We also told you that in the second half we would need some help from the economy because year-over-year comparisons would be tough. And that's how it's played out -- a challenging advertising environment. But 2003 top line growth should still come in at about 4%.

One thing we didn't anticipate was that the Cubs would win the National League Central division and nearly make it to the World Series. While it only helped a little with earnings-per-share, it sets up WGN-TV and Radio, as well as Superstation WGN very well for next year's selling season.

Going back to regular business, margins improved in both newspapers and television in 2003. Television cash flow margins increased more than one percentage point, publishing increased slightly despite continued weakness in help wanted and higher newsprint prices.

Operating cash flow will be about 1.6 billion dollars in 2003. More than half of that converts to free cash flow, and that compares favorably to many of our peers in the media sector. This year we've used our cash primarily to repurchase stock and pay down debt. Outstanding debt declined 650 million dollars in 2003 and will be about 2 billion dollars at year-end, bringing our debt/cash flow ratio to 1.3X.

Last, but certainly not least, we expect earnings per share to be up in the range of 12% in 2003, despite a lower pension credit that impacted earnings by 6 cents.

We have some equally aggressive goals for 2004. But, while the economy looks to be improving, the sustainability of the recovery hinges on job creation. The good news is that we saw four months of sequential improvement in job creation from August through November.

In fact, in November, help wanted advertising grew 1 percent year-over-year -- our first increase in that category in more than 36 months. We see this as an area of big upside for us, particularly given our major market exposure.

On the television side, we're anticipating a strong ad market, thanks to overall inventory tightening due to Olympics and elections in 2004.

Overall our 2004 plan calls for low double-digit earnings-per-share growth, within the range of analysts' estimates. We have a number of positives in both publishing and broadcasting, but we also face another challenging year on the cost side.

As with many other companies, pension accounting is having a significant impact on our retirement expense line. The good news is that since our pension plan is still over-funded, we will not be making cash contributions.

Don will go into the details in a moment, so let me turn now to the regulatory picture.

After much debate, Congress has elected not to hold up the FCC's change in media ownership rules -- relaxation of the broadcast/newspaper cross-ownership ban was left in tact, as were loosened duopoly restrictions. A national TV ownership cap of 39% seems to be a compromise that all have grudgingly accepted. We think that the FCC got it right, and the federal court in Philadelphia will confirm that in the first quarter of 2004. (For us, this was a good outcome. Cross-ownership was our main issue. That seems to be OK. As far as the cap, we are at 30%, so we have significant room to grow.)

We believe strongly that both the public and companies in the media sector will be better served by clarity, not further delay -- just establish the rules and let us compete!

And Tribune is well-positioned to compete in this environment. What sets us apart is something we've called "national reach and local touch." It's a combination of scale on the national level and localism in our individual markets that gives us an advantage in a media marketplace crowded with more and more national media options. Our strength is local mass media.

First, let's talk about the importance of scale. As you know, Tribune's media businesses in the aggregate reach 80% of U.S. consumers with a significant concentration in the top markets. That's a competitive advantage.

And the scale of our assets pays off in a number of ways...

• It provides opportunities to offer viewers and readers broader and deeper news coverage.
  
• In TV, it gives us access to the best syndicated and off-net programming.
  
• And for advertising clients, it allows us to offer customized solutions.
  
• Finally, in both our lines of business, scale affords us greater negotiating leverage to reduce costs.

Let me give you some specific examples of how we are building further value off our existing assets. Just last week, we reached a multi-level agreement with Comcast, the nation's largest MSO and the dominant cable provider in the Chicago area. In partnership with Comcast and the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks, we will launch a new regional sports network in September 2004. We will receive significant rights fees for the 72 Cubs games that will air on the channel, plus a percentage of the network's profits. We've also agreed to sell our 8.6% interest in the Golf Channel to Comcast for 100 million dollars. There are some other important aspects of our relationship with Comcast, and Pat will cover them.

We're also using our assets on the publishing side as a platform for growth.

We are building on existing franchises to reach new readers. For example, in September, we expanded our Spanish language daily, Hoy! , from New York to Chicago where it is meeting with great success. A little more than a year ago, we launched RedEye , an edition of the Chicago Tribune aimed at adults 18-34. RedEye is also proving successful, with total circulation now up to about 90,000 daily.

We've also invested in amNY , a free tabloid for young readers in Manhattan . It's a good way to tap into New York 's 4.5 million daily subway commuters.

As the only media company with television stations, newspapers and web sites in the nation's top three markets of New York , Los Angeles and Chicago , we also have a unique edge that enables us to compete better. We share content, cross-promote our brands and cross-sell advertising among our businesses. You'll hear more about this from Jack and Pat.

In a media environment where new national choices are causing audiences to fragment, local mass media like Tribune's will continue to increase in value. That's because while advertisers have a lot of national network options -- both electronic and print -- there are many fewer local options. That's why our focus will continue to be local mass media, and why we see this as a time to be taking the offensive -- extending brands, innovating, and targeting new audiences to increase our overall share of advertising dollars.

Now, let's go to Don Grenesko. Jack and Pat will follow, and I'll be back to take your questions and wrap up.

Don Grenesko, Sr. Vice-President/Finance and Administration

Thanks Dennis. Today I'll cover our performance as we approach the end of the year, and our outlook for 2004.

Importantly, despite challenges on the cost side in both 2003 and 2004, we'll show excellent earnings growth, thanks to effective cost management, coupled with revenue initiatives at each of our business groups.

First, as we wind down 2003...

• Revenue performance has been strong, as Dennis mentioned. Through November, consolidated revenues are up about 4%, which is where we expect to finish the year. Of special note is the 20% increase in interactive revenues that we've posted year to date. Our significant investment in this growth strategy over the past few years, is paying off.
  
• Our focus on expenses in all of our businesses has been intense this year, and our performance is better than we anticipated, despite a $35 million reduction in our pension credit. Consolidated cash expenses will be up just 3%, and this comes on the heels of a 3% decrease in expenses in 2002.
  
• This combination of top-line growth and cost control will again result in record earnings-per-share for 2003.

Let's now turn to 2004. The initiatives that Jack and Pat will cover should enable our revenues to grow around 6% including 1% from new publications, such as Hoy and amNewYork.

Consolidated cash expenses are expected to increase about 5½% in 2004.

• 2% of this 5½% increase is due to higher retirement plan expense as well as from a double-digit increase in medical expense;
  
• 1 percentage point of the rise reflects a budgeted increase in newsprint prices;
  
• Another 1% relates to the expenses for the new publications I mentioned.
  
• And the remaining 1½% is due to normal salary and other inflationary increases.

Now let's talk about the reasons for our retirement plan expense, because it accounts for about 1/3 of next year's consolidated expense increase.

• First is the continued impact of investment results from 2000 through 2002. During that period, our pension plan assets lost 7.5% annually, compared to an expected return of 9.5%. These results were slightly better than other pension plans and significantly above the S&P 500 Index, which fell by 13% annually over this 3-year period. The impact of these results is being phased into the calculation of our pension expense over a 4-year period. This accounts for $30 million of our increase in 2004. We will continue to feel the impact of these investment results in 2005 and 2006, but to a much lesser extent. On the positive side, our pension investment results are up about 20% this year.
  
• Second, the rate we use to discount our pension liabilities is projected to decline, which increases our expense by nearly $10 million. This rate will be based upon long-term bond rates at year-end.
  
• Finally, we are phasing in a new company-wide retirement plan, because our ESOP expires at the end of this year. As a result, the preferred shares in the ESOP will convert to common shares, eliminating preferred dividends. These preferred dividends were used to fund the ESOP, but were not reflected as a compensation expense. They did however, reduce our net income in calculating EPS. Under the new plan, all of our retirement contributions will be reflected as compensation expense. Due to this change in "geography," benefits expense will appear to increase by nearly $20 million, but there is no impact on earnings per share.
  
• Importantly, our pension plans are overfunded by $130 million, and we won't be forced to make a cash contribution to our pension plan in 2004 like many other companies will have to do.

Turning to our business groups, Publishing's newsprint expense is expected to be up in the high-single to low-double digit range in 2004. The combined impact of higher retirement and newsprint costs will cause total publishing expenses to grow in the mid-single digits.

In television, we have a good story on the cost side. Programming expenses began to decline in this year's fourth quarter, and will decline in the low-single digits for 2004. This will help to offset rising medical and retirement costs, so overall TV expenses are only expected to be up in the low-single digits.

With that perspective on expenses, let's now turn to other key components of next year's financial outlook.

Equity income should improve somewhat over 2003, with contributions from the TV Food and the WB Networks partially offset by increased promotional spending at Classified Ventures.

Debt at the end of this year will be down to the $2 billion level. We expect it to decline again in 2004, dropping to $1.8 billion by year-end. We will have reduced our debt by about a third in just two years, substantially enhancing our financial flexibility. With this lower debt level, interest expense is expected to fall by 6% next year.

2004 Capital spending will be in the range of $220 million, an increase over recent years because we will be making important investments in printing capabilities that Jack will discuss.

That brings me to ROIC -- return on invested capital -- which is a key performance measure for us. Historically, our return has been in the 12-14% range, but it declined to around 5% following the Times Mirror acquisition and 2001 recession. It's improved each year since then, and in 2004, we expect ROIC to increase to over 8%, which about covers our cost of capital. We've been able to accomplish this by growing cash flow, focusing on high value capital projects, and using a disciplined approach to acquisitions.

We expect to generate about $900 million in free cash flow next year, and we expect low double-digit growth in our EPS, which is within the current range of analysts' estimates. Bottom line: Tribune will be well-positioned for the future and for delivering value to our shareholders.

And on that note, I'll turn it over to Jack.

Jack Fuller, President/Tribune Publishing

Thanks, Don. With Dennis' comments about our the value of our local mass media as background, I'm going to get more specific about how we plan to invest in new products and services that meet both readers and advertisers' changing needs. Our ability to develop innovative solutions along with our scale make me confident that our newspaper franchises will grow faster than the industry as the economy recovers.

Let's start by taking a look at how our 2003 results compare to the industry. As you can see, our results stack up very well.

Tribune outpaced the industry in retail driven by the strength of preprints. National lagged slightly because movies have been a drag until recently. Even so, our national categories three-year CAGR was more than twice the industry growth rate. Classified was less negative than the industry because of our intense sales focus . And we expect our overall revenue performance will improve in 2004 for reasons I will discuss in a moment.

Now let's take a quick look at some of this year's accomplishments.

CareerBuilder is replacing Monster as the exclusive job listings provider for AOL and Microsoft Network. This will increase CareerBuilder's audience to well over 10 million users each month.

The Baltimore Sun reached a contract settlement with the Newspaper Guild. It marks the beginning of a new working relationship with the Guild in which The Sun and its employees should prosper. The newspaper should see improved financial performance.

We have also moved quickly and aggressively to extend our brands and develop new products aimed at targeted segments of our audience, especially young and Spanish language readers. Here are a few examples:

Hoy debuted in Chicago in September, building on the success we enjoy in New York . Its paid circulation has already reached 17,000 bringing Hoy's total circulation to 113,000. And its revenues are far exceeding our expectations. Overall our Spanish language publications will have $26 million in revenue in 2003, a 34% increase over 2002.

RedEye is continuing to attract new advertising dollars. This past fall, American Express used it to promote their new product, Blue Cash, in Chicago . The campaign included -- a double truck ad in the Chicago Tribune, an extensive presence on Metromix and all the ad avails in RedEye! The result was hundreds of thousands of dollars for Tribune in Chicago and a very happy client.

Here in Manhattan , amNewYork 's circulation has grown to approximately 170,000 and advertising is strong with firms like Filene's Basement, TJ Maxx, AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. Since Newsday has not yet established strong readership there, we're taking ad dollars directly out of other competitors. amNewYork is also benefiting from the promotional power of WPIX, with clever ads like this one. (Roll video)

Now let's turn to 2004. As Don mentioned, we will have challenges on the cost side, but you can count on us to operate our newspapers in the disciplined manner you have come to expect from Tribune.

Today, I want to concentrate on the opportunities on the revenue side. Together, our new products will add a percentage point of growth. There are three other major drivers that should enable Tribune Publishing to grow faster than the industry: 1) our newspapers and CareerBuilder are well positioned to capture help wanted advertising as it rebounds;
2) we are making smart capital investments that allow us to better serve advertisers and thus increase our share of their budgets; 3) we are aggressively improving our position in the fast growing national category through Tribune Media Net.

Let's start with help wanted, where the rebound is already beginning. As Dennis mentioned, we finally had a year-over-year help wanted increase in November. And all the economic signs are pointing to a continued acceleration.

The story gets even better as we look out a number of years. A generational workplace transition unlike any other in US history is about to occur. Within the next five years the baby boomers will begin retiring in significant numbers and there are far fewer people in the trailing age cohort who can replace them.

Employers are going to need to use multiple advertising channels, including both print and online, to attract and hire quality employees, and that is what they get with CareerBuilder. As a result of the distribution agreements with AOL and Microsoft Network that are starting now, plus the continued strong local promotion, we expect CareerBuilder's job seeker traffic to further close the gap with Monster.

Having more job seekers leads to more revenue. We are already seeing a pick up by CareerBuilder among Fortune 1000 customers, where Monster had gotten much of its business in the last several years. CareerBuilder has taken key accounts away from Monster, including Firestone/Bridgestone, Target, Safeway, Hyatt and Lockheed Martin.

We're also making smart capital investments.

We have invested more than $160 million over the last four years for upgraded preprint capability in Los Angeles and Chicago . These investments are really paying off. Both markets saw their share of the preprint market increase in 2003, and we expect that to continue in 2004. And we are building on this with new insertion capacity in South Florida , Hartford , Newport News and Orlando .

Another area of revenue growth is color advertising. Advertisers have shown a willingness to pay a meaningful premium for color. In 2003 this color premium at the Chicago Tribune alone amounted to $20 million. We'll be investing in Chicago and LA to increase color capacity.

Finally, Tribune Publishing is focused on the continued growth of Tribune Media Net. In 2003, TMN booked $70 million in incremental revenue -- and we expect this to grow to $85 million in 2004. Since its inception in 2001, TMN has grown at an impressive compound annual growth rate of 37%. Next year, we plan to expand TMN's retail sales force and increase our focus on national retailers.

Summing up, Tribune Publishing is well positioned for strong revenue growth as we enter 2004.

Now here's Pat Mullen to give you a closer look at the success we've been having at our broadcast operations...

Patrick Mullen, President/Tribune Broadcasting

Thanks, Jack. As Dennis said, we are very confident about the future of local mass media and we know that scale helps to improve our competitive position.

Our accomplishments in 2003 are good examples of this.

• TV cash flow margins will improve a full percentage point to 41.5%;
  
• We added scale with the addition of WB affiliates in St. Louis and Portland , the nation's 21st and 24th largest markets, respectively;
  
• On the programming front we've had a number of exciting developments which will pay dividends in future years.

We've acquired the rights to HBO's "Sex and the City" beginning in Fall 2005 for all of our television markets . Not only is this a terrific show -- numerous Emmys attest to that fact -- but it's also the perfect fit with our high-rated sitcoms such as "Friends." HBO's subscriber base is about 27 million homes or, about 25% of U.S. Television Households. So, for a majority of viewers, we're providing a brand new program, but one with tremendous built-in brand-name recognition.

This programming from HBO is also significant in that it introduces another high-quality supplier for that all-important early and late-fringe time periods.

And earlier this year Tribune Entertainment announced a new syndication partnership with DreamWorks to distribute 34 motion pictures -- a package which represents 58 academy award nominations and 23 winners. These films will air on Tribune's major market stations also beginning in 2005.

Our key sitcoms "Friends," "Raymond," "Will & Grace" - continue to do very well in early and late fringe -- critical dayparts which account for over 40% of station revenues. And season-to-date, our local stations primetime ratings are 50% higher than the national ratings for the WB network. And, you'll recall that last year at this conference one of the headlines was the dramatic increase at the WB... well, in contrast to all the reports about the this season's ratings, it's important that you know that our stations HH ratings are down only 4% from last year.

Now let's turn from programming to ad sales. After a very robust 2002 driven by a recovering ad market and strong political business we knew that comparisons in the second half of 2003 would be difficult.

So the flat pace for this year's fourth quarter looks pretty good, and we're confident our stations are outpacing the majority of the industry.

Finally, we continued to build momentum in cross-media markets in 2003. Jack mentioned Tribune Media Net -- and let me add that fully half of TMN's revenues are related to cross-media. A couple good examples of our cross-media success recently came out of Los Angeles .

On the cross-selling front, KTLA and the LA Times created a winning campaign for a brand new client -- Vegas.com, which generated $2M in incremental revenue.

And for powerful cross-promotion -- a really great example is the WB magazine you see up on the screen right now. The magazine ran as a supplement in the September 21st edition of the LA Times.

From putting program promotion in the hands of our readers to driving younger WB viewers to the newspaper, this was a very exciting and ground-breaking project. It was so successful that we'll repeat it in February and we're exploring the possibility of expanding to other Tribune cross-media markets as well.

On that note, let's take a look at 2004.

We expect the overall market, fueled by Olympics and political advertising, to show robust revenue growth. While our political share of revenue is lower than our spot revenue share, it's still an important and growing segment for us. More and more, politicians are realizing that they need to reach the young "swing voters." These are voters who don't have years of history voting for one political party and they are influenced by television commercials. And most importantly, though they may not vote in local elections, they do vote in important state and national elections. These voters fall squarely into the demographic that our WB and Fox affiliates reach most effectively. In addition, Tribune stations benefit from the pressure political advertising puts on local spot inventory, which gives us pricing power in the spot marketplace.

We also plan to grow distribution of Superstation WGN--one of Tribune Broadcasting's key strategies. In April 2001, we took over the distribution of the superstation from United Video. Since that time, as each of our stations' retransmission consent agreements comes up for renewal, our #1 priority has been to secure greater distribution for the Superstation. Since 2001, distribution has grown from 52 million to 58 million subscribers, with more homes on the way.

Dennis mentioned our transaction with Comcast. In addition to the Chicago sports channel and Golf Channel elements...

• we've renewed our retransmission consent rights agreement for our local stations,
• As Comcast rolls out HDTV, Tribune digital signals will be added to that tier,
• and, I am happy to report, Comcast has agreed to substantially increase the number of Superstation WGN homes on its owned and managed systems across the country.

With the new Comcast agreement and agreements we have reached with other cable and DBS companies, WGN will add approximately 7 million additional homes over the next four years. As you would expect, similar negotiations with other cable companies continue to take place, and we fully expect our scale to prove beneficial in those discussions as well.

And while we believe it is an opportune time to monetize our interest in the Golf Channel, we continue to own significant stakes in the WB and the TV Food Network. These strategic investments have also become valuable assets, and both will make positive contributions on our equity line in 2004.

Speaking of strategic objectives, let me wrap-up by conveying our confidence in the future of local mass media. We will continue to build strong local stations responsive to the communities they serve. These stations will continue to provide compelling programming content -- the best off-net sitcoms, strong local news operations, and powerful, young-skewing WB and Fox network programming. We will continue to seek acquisitions in the Top 30 markets, and we will look to build two-station clusters in both existing and new markets and create value from cross-media. And as I mentioned a moment ago, we also will grow our national cable channel Superstation WGN, with its dual revenue stream of advertising dollars and subscriber fees.

All in all, we are focused on growth, and well-positioned to deliver!

Now, back to Dennis.

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This document contains certain comments or forward-looking statements that are based largely on the company's current expectations and are subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties. Such comments and statements should be understood in the context of Tribune's publicly available reports filed with the SEC, including the most current annual report, 10-K and 10-Q, which contain a discussion of various factors that may affect the company's business. These factors could cause actual future performance to differ materially from current expectations. Tribune Company is not responsible for updating the information contained in this press release beyond the published date, or for changes made to this document by wire services or Internet service providers.