Nexstar launches statewide newscast on four stations

[T.L. Hughes 753]

Monday saw the debut of Arkansas Today, which despite what its title would suggest (given the shared network affiliation of the four stations carrying the program), is actually a weekday noon newscast. Mallory Hardin and Greg Dee of Little Rock's KARK-TV serve as the anchors of the newscast (Hardin doing news and Dee serving as meteorologist), which is being broadcast on Nexstar Broadcasting's four NBC stations that serve the state of Arkansas to some degree (KARK, along with KNWA/Fort Smith-Fayetteville; KTAL, which is licensed to Texarkana (the Texas side, not the Arkansas side) and actually primarily serves Shreveport, Lousiana as well as northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas; and KTVE, which is licensed to El Dorado, Arkansas, but also serves Monroe, Louisiana).

 

The newscast includes stories from reporters from each of the four stations and features local weather inserts on KTVE, KTAL and KNWA, using their on-staff meteorologists.

[WXmanTim 88]

In my mind, this is one of those "smart, but dumb" plans. Smart in the sense that it will save on overhead from not having each station produce a midday newscast, dumb in the sense that as mentioned only *two of the stations are actually *in Arkansas. Yes, KTVE is licensed to an Arkansas city, but the station is actually located *in Monroe, Louisiana. Same for KTAL, licensed to Texarkana, TX, with studios in Shreveport, LA.

 

Who, in either city, the primary population centers of each market, is going to be interested in a Arkansas-centric newscast? And in both cases, the Arkansas-portions of the market are very sparsely populated.

 

Cordillera's Montana stations do something very similar, airing a statewide midday newscast produced out of Billings' KTVQ, but each station runs it's own locally-branded "open." But primarily, the state gets a Billings-centric newscast with a smattering of news from the other markets...a state-wide weather segment...and an incredibly boring farm/ag segment.

[T.L. Hughes 753]

In my mind, this is one of those "smart, but dumb" plans. Smart in the sense that it will save on overhead from not having each station produce a midday newscast, dumb in the sense that as mentioned only *two of the stations are actually *in Arkansas. Yes, KTVE is licensed to an Arkansas city, but the station is actually located *in Monroe, Louisiana. Same for KTAL, licensed to Texarkana, TX, with studios in Shreveport, LA.

 

Who, in either city, the primary population centers of each market, is going to be interested in a Arkansas-centric newscast? And in both cases, the Arkansas-portions of the market are very sparsely populated.

 

Cordillera's Montana stations do something very similar, airing a statewide midday newscast produced out of Billings' KTVQ, but each station runs it's own locally-branded "open." But primarily, the state gets a Billings-centric newscast with a smattering of news from the other markets...a state-wide weather segment...and an incredibly boring farm/ag segment.

 

The fact that KTVE and KTAL carry the newscast despite the fact that one is not licensed to an Arkansas city and the other's operations are based in Louisiana clearly doesn't make much sense, but they probably figured that since Monroe and Shreveport are border markets (which in this case, would refer to markets that serve portions of two or more states) that it would appeal directly to viewers in the Arkansas counties that those two stations serve; in KTVE's case, its viewing area consists of 28 counties/parishes, half of which are on the Arkansas side of the market, while KTAL's viewing area only includes ten Arkansas counties (14 counties are in Texas, and eight Louisiana parishes are in its viewing area).

 

The fact of the matter is that apparently, this isn't the first time that Nexstar has attempted to do a regional newscast on its Arkansas stations: for a few years starting in 2007, KARK and KNWA jointly-produced Arkansas at Noon, which utilized anchors from both KARK and KNWA, and was simulcast on those two stations (KARK later produced its own noon newscast, while KNWA stopped carrying local news in the midday timeslot).

 

Besides news and weather segments, a TVNewsCheck article also states that Arkansas Today includes a sports segment (which not very many stations include within their midday newscasts) focusing on University of Arkansas sports (aptly titled "Razorback Nation"), originating from the studios of KNWA, which actually has contributed to KARK's sportscasts (and at one point, handled sports duties for the station before it reinstated a full-time sports department a couple of years ago).