Out of the Inkwell

Fatman and fish

My buddy Dave D. and I participated in the annual Beaver Lake fishing tournament in Ware – Dave's home is on the lake – and with his expert guidance – he knows the fish are – I landed this 18 3/4 inch large mouth bass.

Don't worry, only minnows were harmed in the catching of this fish. He went back into the lake.

The following from www.mediabuyerplanner.com is pretty interesting.

Television station revenue is down steeply across the country - so much so that in many places, media conglomerates are combining television news broadcasts with their newspaper operations to avoid the possibility of having to close their TV news divisions altogether.

E.W. Scripps was down 20% in the first quarter, compared with the same quarter last year, while Belo was down 23% and LIN TV was down 21%. News Corp.’s station revenue fell 28% and the Walt Disney Company’s station revenue slipped 28%, according to The New York Times.

With TV station revenue tanking, Tribune Company has merged its TV stations with its daily newspapers in two markets - Miami and Hartford - in order to combine forces and fight the challenges facing the industries together.

Last summer, for example, Tribune CW affiliate WSFL moved into the same building as Tribune’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Now, employees of each are assigned to stories from a single assignment desk.

TV stations have also begun to share camera crews. NBC and Fox stations have created camera pools in cities including Philadelphia and New York.

SNL Kagan predicts that TV station revenue will fall 15.7% this year, with markets in Michigan suffering the most, due to the auto industry crisis. Things look slightly better for 2010, though declines for local TV will continue to be about 2% for the next five years, according to the updated Radio/TV Station Annual Outlook report.

BIA Advisory Services predicts that revenue television revenue overall will take a dramatic fall this year, plunging below the $20 billion mark.

After six years with industry revenue hovering between $20 billion and $22 billion, 2009 is expected to end at an even $17 billion in revenues, a 21.2% drop in two years from 2007’s $21.5 billion, BIA says.


LIN operates TV22 in our market. It's interesting that the media corporations are merging the two news operations to save the television ones.

© 2009 by Gordon Michael Dobbs