A few weeks ago, there was a lot of interesting debate over Sam Zell’s comments after he bought the Tribune Company, a conglomerate of media properties that includes quite a few prominent newspapers, such as the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. The comment that attracted a lot of ire was about how he would try and settle things with Google as he felt that Google’s news was getting a lot of their content “for free”, and that had to change.

Well you can bet that somewhere, wherever billionaires hatch their plans, Sam Zell is sharpening his knives.  There’s a report right out of the New York Times that reports the Times Group, in addition to the Tribune Company and Gannet Company (which owns the USAToday) as having declining revenues this quarter as compared to last.

The reasons?  Many, but soft ad sales are at the top in areas such as real estate in and in classifieds.

While its too early to tell if USAToday’s changes will yield long term fruit (it seems like a success in the short run), and indeed any “internet” related initiatives, the real issue is if these changes — if any changes — which increase internet revenue will be able to match the decline in print revenues.  After all, its clear from the post that internet revenues are rising … just not as fast as print revenues are falling.

And you can bet that Zell, and his other media bretheren, are fully cognizant of this fact, all the while eyeing Google’s recent surge in ad sales that was reported just a few days ago.  Lest we forget exactly how profitable Google has become, it earned an extra 61% increase in revenues over the same period as last year — mostly thanks to ad sales and grabbing market share from Yahoo!

Sam Zell said in that interview at Stanford to give him “two weeks to make himself a genius“.  Well, Mr. Zell, its about two weeks.  Your revenues are down.  Google’s are up.  What’s your next move?