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COVER STORY - December 2002 by Stephanie Rommel
In Paducah David Jernigan, vice president of sales and programming for WPSD-TV, sees December as strong with 2003 coming on as a very good year. With consumer confidence still high, retailers are experiencing good sales revenues according to Nick Ulmer, WAVE-TV’s general sales manager in Louisville. “Entrepreneur magazine listed Louisville as one of the ‘25 Hot Cities,’ and we have one of the largest discretionary spending ratios for a city our size and population.” On the radio side, Mark Thomas, station manager and director of sales for Louisville’s Clear Channel, reports they are experiencing a very robust fourth quarter. “In the past, business has been up and down, but now we’re pacing very well with political and automotive sales.” Comparing more medium-sized radio markets, Commonwealth Broadcasting’s vice president of sales and current Kentucky Broadcasters Association Chairman Dale Thornhill sees an up trend for the year. “We’ve seen times this year where clients have been cautious, but things are going great and we’re not seeing a decline. We’re more of an across-the-desk sales approach in our size markets so we can maintain strong relationships with our clients. Consequently, our peaks aren’t as high and our valleys aren’t as low as in the larger markets who rely on advertising agencies and media buyers,” he says.
As far as other television trends, Langford sees consolidation ahead, much like radio. With four separate entities competing aggressively in Louisville for the same news audience, “it’s been a jump ball.” But he states, “community is the one franchise that is not a commodity … it’s a relationship. Forming relationships in your market makes you invaluable to your community.” A station can differentiate itself from its competition, he said, “by letting people feel connected to you. And, you do that with the charities you align your station with, using your broadcast license in the right ways and acting as a viable and positive catalyst for your market – that’s the passion.” Jernigan believes his Paducah NBC station is a little different because of the hyphenation of his market and territorial loyalties. The Western Kentucky market “likes us, Southwest Missouri likes the Cape Girardeau station and southern Illinois viewers have their own viewing habits as well.”
A significant presence in the Commonwealth’s television industry is the non-profit Kentucky Educational Television (KET) network. First on the air in 1968, KET is one of the larger statewide public broadcasting networks and the single largest PBS member network. The nonprofit’s CEO, Virginia Fox, has led the network since 1991. Its 31 transmitters and four translators deliver both the PBS national schedule and KET’s own programming to viewers throughout Kentucky and in parts of seven neighboring states. The power of
radio Mark Thomas is station manager and director of sales for six Clear Channel properties in Louisville, including the Kentucky News Network (which broadcasts news/weather/sports/agriculture to 85 other stations statewide) and the Total Traffic division, providing traffic reports to all their own Louisville stations. In the past several years, Clear Channel has gone through a tremendous period of consolidation but has settled down now into a “breather” mode. “Our main objective is to create a cluster of radio stations and properties that are programming and revenue winners. We utilize on-going research with regard to listener preferences and personalities that our program and operations people look at every single day.” And, he explains, “since we have this mass of Kentucky radio properties, we also look at the needs of our customers in trading zones like Cincinnati and Evansville. It’s a new day as far as advertising is concerned. Because of the power of these stations, the customer benefits.”
The spring of 1997 saw the first of their acquisitions, and during the last 18 months the group has been busy “growing” what was acquired. “Commonwealth now is in a nurturing stage,” Thornhill adds. “We consolidated in markets in which we had confidence so we have our clusters in good geographic shape right now.” A horse of an entirely different color is public radio. The largest station in Lexington is WUKY with Roger Chesser as its general manager. “There is tremendous competition for audiences. However, our best opportunity,” he states, “is to serve our local listeners in our local market. Cumulus and Clear Channel are producing and economizing news from other areas. We are right here. We’re not just a computer playing back announcements and news. We are involved in our community.” Chesser maintains their best strategy for future success is building on National Public Radio news mixed with local news. The public radio stations across Kentucky have formed a kind of “wire service” for news-sharing called the Kentucky Public News Exchange. Kentucky Broadcasters
Association “It’s an exciting time for the industry as a whole,” says Gary White, KBA president/CEO. “While consolidation has slowed for now, overall it provided a variety of formats and was good for the industry.”
Clear Channel’s Thomas is the newly elected incoming chairman of the KBA. Yet it is the coming technology that will create the tallest hurdles for the industry. White compares this change of converting from analog to digital broadcast signals as similar to the time when the country switched from black and white TV sets to color. Both Langford and Jernigan agree the biggest battles facing them are the transition to HDTV along with associated costs and changing viewers’ sets. We are still a number of years away,” Thornhill explains. “It was scheduled for TV broadcasters to all go digital in 2006, but I’m hearing we are going to have to extend that deadline to give manufacturers and consumers a chance to catch up.” Stephanie Rommel is
a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2002, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2002, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
“Better
than average”… “very good”… “robust”
apparently describes the television and radio ad sales for the fourth
quarter throughout Kentucky’s broadcast markets. The fact this
is an election year doesn’t hurt inventory. Also helping is General
Motors, which has designated Louisville as a target market for its new
product line, pouring advertising dollars into the media.
Television
historically does well during heavy political years because it creates
an artificial demand on inventory according to Steve Langford, general
manager of WAVE-TV. With a five to eight percent increase in demand
coupled with television’s finite inventory, that adds up to a mighty
fine year.
In
the next five years he thinks the changing relationships between the
networks and their affiliates will be a very important issue as the
networks have been steadily taking away compensation from their affiliate
stations. Jernigan’s challenge is to figure out how to best replace
that missing revenue. 
Privately-held
Commonwealth Broadcasting dominates the middle markets with 14 FM and
nine AM radio stations throughout Elizabethtown, Madisonville, Lebanon,
Bowling Green, Campbellsville, Greensburg, Springfield, Bardstown and
Glasgow. 
Headquartered
in Frankfort, the KBA continues to expand upon its success with its
educational and training programs in sales, management, programming
and news.