When real estate mogul Sam Zell closed his purchase of Tribune Co. in 2007, he brushed aside dire prognoses about the newspaper business and promised to arrest its decline with a "fresh, entrepreneurial culture that is fast and nimble, and which rewards innovation.''

To that end, he hired a pioneering radio programmer, Lee Abrams, as his "chief innovation officer" and unleashed him to create "a sustainable, relevant product for our customers and communities."

In a series of stream-of-consciousness memos and meetings, Abrams triggered jazzy redesigns of Tribune's eight newspapers, placing a counterintuitive bet on luring younger audiences and occasional readers to print.

Five months ago, Tribune unveiled the first project, a top-to-bottom redesign of the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. Heavy on charticles and bullet points, the new-look Sentinel reminded one veteran industry analyst of a print version of AM radio.

So far, Abrams' ballyhooed efforts to rethink the American newspaper—employing more radical versions of the big headlines, small articles, and colorful charts rolled out at other newspapers over the last three decades—have had no impact on declining circulation.

And analysts are skeptical about whether Tribune's focus on redesigning print makes good business sense as advertising, the main income generator for newspapers, continues to soften. On Monday, the company reported a 19 percent drop in advertising revenues and a 2 percent drop in circulation revenues for the third quarter compared with last year.

"Strategically, it's a distraction," Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst for Outsell and Content Bridges, says of the redesign effort. "The major challenge to a company like Tribune is not to try to incrementally either stop circulation declines or add a point or two, but to really remake itself into a multimedia modern company."

The Tribune redesign process "wasn't really market-driven" but rather "simply done by the seat of the pants because it was felt that something had to be done," says Alan Mutter, a new-media consultant who writes the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog. "That's a fairly dangerous way to run a multimillion-dollar business."

The risk, Mutter says, is that changes could "upset and potentially anger existing customers without attracting any new ones."

Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman says the company is "focused on executing, we're not focused on committees and 12 different pieces of focus-oriented, consultant-driven types of research." But he says that the redesigns were accomplished "in a very thoughtful way" and "first and foremost with readers in mind."

The man behind the redesigns, Abrams, is an affable Chicago native who made his name in radio. In the 1970s, using what he calls "a balance of science and emotion," he invented the album-oriented rock format that made FM radio commercially successful.

In his recent history of radio broadcasting, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation (Random House, 2007), Marc Fisher said Abrams' ability to intuit popular taste in music made him the radio industry's "most sought-after guru."

After cloning FM radio stations around the country, Abrams moved to XM Satellite Radio, the still-unprofitable broadcaster where he programmed dozens of channels.

In his latest incarnation as newspaper savior, Abrams, 55, says his aim is to convert occasional and Sunday readers into regulars. While each makeover is distinct, Abrams' tastes have been influential.