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Meredith to buy WGGB


Glimmer

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I see this deal going through very quickly. Perhaps before the end of the summer.

 

Meredith definitely should consider looking for opportunities to cluster up in New England, and Providence has one right away for WPRI. If they wanted to splurge, they could try to purchase WHDH in Boston...

 

Wow. We didn't have to wait for the paperwork to be posted.

 

Meredith is giving Mr. Gormally something he wouldn't refuse. Now let's backtrack for a second. Almost seven years ago, Mr. Gormally paid Sinclair $21.2M to acquire the station. Meredith is buying the station from Mr. Gormally for $53.8M!!!!

 

Keep in mind, they're paying to get 2 network affiliated stations, with 2 advertising revenue streams, and 2 retransmission fee streams. Gormally only paid for one at the time he bought it.

Sorry but I've never understood the logic of two co-owned stations not competing against each other. The two stations will get the ad dollars going to the same place regardless of which of the two channels you're watching. Just a thought. Take it for what it's worth.

The main reason I've heard is it fragments the audience. So, if you are running two newscasts out of your shop at the same time you are splitting your audience. In theory if you only run one newscast in the time slot could then have both sets of viewers watching one station instead of two. The logic being if viewers are watching your news you can combine them to better compete. For example, lets say in market x two duopoly stations are running news at the same time and each gets approx. 35k viewers. Let's for kicks say they are 3rd & 4th in the market and the #1 station has 70k viewers. Again, the theory is that if they only put out one newscast from the duopoly operation at a time the viewers of each of the two previous individual newscasts would follow to the station that keeps the newscast. So, in this example 35k + 35k = 70k allowing them to battle for #1 and if all the viewers follow the ad dollars would be the same (or, more if you could unseat the #1) as they would be selling the same amount of viewers to advertisers. Plus, it would then open up the other channel for other programming which at this point the ad dollars received there would be gravy. Not to mention the additional expense of staffing needed to put out two newscasts at the same time. I'm not saying I totally agree with it but, just trying to share some of the "logic" behind it.

 

It's also worth noting they could be "forced" into doing that. The facilities the duopoly shares may not have multiple control rooms (or, studios) making production of two different newscasts at the same time difficult if not impossible.

 

Yep. They do that in radio all the time.

How many "truly" compete? I don't know of many. Sure within a cluster they might offer similar formats but, they are usually meant to be "complementary" formats. They usually target the same demo and therefore keep the ad dollars "in house." This freezes out the competition on selling that format/demo and gives the sales team the ability to sell a demo across multiple stations. For Example, the old ABC/Citadel cluster here for years ran what was called "the wall of rock" across their three stations. Their "cash cow" was the Classic Rock station so, for years they flanked it with a Hard Rock station and an Alt Rock station. Sure, the playlists intermingled somewhat and they targeted similar listeners. Although the Hard Rock station and the Alt Station held their own they were there really there as "sacrificial lambs" to protect the "cash cow". The fact that they held their own was an added bonus. No other group in the market could really launch a "rock" format as they had the market cornered. And, they were selling the same demo across three stations thereby locking up all those advertisers. So, they weren't really "competing" in the traditional sense so much as "working in tandem" to protect/better the cluster as a whole.
Yep. They do that in radio all the time.

The only example I can think of is the CBS Radio-owned all-news combo of WCBS/880 and WINS/1010 in New York. But both stations have signals that complement each other - WINS targets the five main NYC boroughs with the classic "22 minutes" delivery while WCBS aims at the suburbs with a longer-form delivery.
The only example I can think of is the CBS Radio-owned all-news combo of WCBS/880 and WINS/1010 in New York. But both stations have signals that complement each other - WINS targets the five main NYC boroughs with the classic "22 minutes" delivery while WCBS aims at the suburbs with a longer-form delivery.

I was thinking of like certain clear channel stations, they say they compete with one format which is a top-40, the other is a completely different. But in reality they operate on the same boat.
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I was thinking of like certain clear channel stations, they say they compete with one format which is a top-40, the other is a completely different. But in reality they operate on the same boat.

By that definition, I can understand that concept.

 

iHeart has a few examples of that... in Dallas, they have KISS FM (CHR) and NOW (Adult Top 40). In LA and Chicago, iHeart has KIIS FM (CHR) and MyFM (Adult Top 40). And in NYC, iHeart has KTU (Rhythmic), Z100 (CHR) and WLTW (which is morphing into a Hot AC).

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