CHICAGO – More than four years after crushing debt and plunging advertising sales forced it to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Tribune Co. has emerged with a new television-focused board and over $1 billion in new financing.

Led by such creative and technology heavyweights as Ross Levinsohn, the former interim CEO of Yahoo Inc., and Peter Murphy, former strategic officer of The Walt Disney Co., the board's roster suggests a focus on the company's TV assets rather than newspapers, which haven't managed to turn around declines in readership and advertising. Peter Liguori, a former TV executive at Discovery Communications Inc. and News Corp.'s Fox, is expected to be named CEO in the next several weeks.

The exit closes a dark period for Tribune, which was founded in 1847 with a hand-cranked print run of 400 copies of the Chicago Tribune. It founded the WGN broadcasting brand with a radio station in 1924 and a TV station in 1948. The call letters stood for "World's Greatest Newspaper." Tribune first went public in 1983 valued at $206 million — one of the biggest IPOs of its day — and expanded over the years into a media giant through acquisitions of TV stations such as KTLA in Los Angeles and newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and Newsday. It also owns a stake in the Food Network and online job site CareerBuilder.com.