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A profile of the media market in Tampa Bay, Florida, is presented.
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LOCAL AND STATE OFFICIALS AND THE LORDS OF BASEBALL ARE CURRENTLY DEBATING whether Tampa Bay, Fla.'s money-losing Major League Baseball club, the Devil Rays, is worth saving. MLB plans to fold two teams before the start of the 2002 season, and the D Rays-whose 62-100 won-lost record this past season tied for baseball's worst mark-are one of four teams on the endangered list. If the 4-year-old Devil Rays are put out of business, the shutdown would have a significant impact on several local media outlets in the Tampa Bay area.
The market's cable sports channel, Fox Sports Net, carried 64 Devil Rays game telecasts this year. Hearst-Argyle's Independent WMOR-TV in Tampa broadcast 53 games, while Gannett Broadcasting's CBS affiliate WTSP carried 15 D Rays contests. On radio, Clear Channel Communications' WFLA-AM carried nearly all of the team's 162 games, save for a few that aired on its sister Clear Channel outlet WDAE-AM.
The fast-growing Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota market, on Florida's Central Gulf Coast, is the 14th-largest in the country with 1.5 million TV homes, according to Nielsen Media Research. The market's ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates all hired new general managers and news directors this year.
NBC affiliate WFLA-TV, owned by Media General, welcomed Eric Land as its new president and general manager and Forrest Carr as news director. Scripps Broadcasting's ABC affiliate WFTS hired Sam Stallworth as president, Bill Berra as news director and John Doyle as creative-services director. Both Berra and Doyle had previously worked for Stallworth in Columbus, Ohio. At WT-- SP, the new gm is Sam Rossenwasser, who most recently held a corporate post with Gannett. Last month, WTSP hired another former Gannett corporate executive, Lane Michaelson, as its news director.
WFLA is the market's longtime leader in ratings and revenue ($64.5 million in 2000, according to BIA Financial Network), although its lead has narrowed a bit over the past few years. In April 2000, WFLA and sister Media General properties The Tampa Tribune daily newspaper and Tampa Bay Online moved into a new $40 million headquarters. The Media General siblings cooperate on some newsgathering efforts, as well as on a community outreach effort, the Citizen's Voice Project. As part of that initiative, WFLA this fall appointed its first viewer ombudsman, Laurie Scollin, who appears in a weekly segment to discuss questions or complaints that viewers have raised about the station's news coverage.
WFLA news director Carr says that the viewer-feedback effort is both an attempt to produce better journalism and to boost ratings. "We were unfocused. We were not satisfied with our performance," Carr says. "We're trying to improve and build upon our relationship with [viewers]."
In another change at WFLA, the station last May took over the sales-traffic operations of all 26 Media General television stations.
The Scripps station group has made WFTS (Channel 28) one of its top priorities. "We're putting on a more aggressive newscast," says new gm Stallworth. In July, the station introduced the revamped investigative segment "28 Investigates," led by reporter Robin Guess. The team has two dedicated reporters, an editor and a producer.
WFTS also recently hired Patrick Emory and Lissette Campos as coanchors of its morning news program and recruited Al Keck, previously of WSP, as sports anchor.
In syndicated programming, WFTS has acquired Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for fall 2002. The station plans to air the strip from 4 to 5 p.m. as a lead-in to its evening news.
Viacom's UPN outlet WTOG-TV does well with the syndicated shows Friends and Frasier, which air from 7 to 8 p.m. and again from 10 to 11 p.m. The outlet also carries a double-helping of The Simpsons from 6 to 7 p.m. WTOG exited the local news race in 1998, three years after Fox's owned-and-operated WTVT-TV launched a competing newscast at 10 p.m. and quickly surpassed WTOG in the ratings.
In July, WTVT's 5 p.m. newscast edged out WFLA in households, earning a 7.4 rating/15 share to WFLA's 7.3/15 (see Nielsen chart on page 16). WTVT also produces a half-hour local newscast from 6:30 to 7 p.m. that competes against network newscasts on WFLA, WFTS and WTSP. And WTVT's Good Day Tampa Bay (5-9 a.m.) is in a tight ratings race with WFLA's morning program.
On the syndicated-programming front, WT VT this fall added reruns of King of the Hill and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
WTVT also has the Fox network's NFL coverage, which features 12 Tampa Bay Buccaneers broadcasts this season. While the lowly Devil Rays' have had difficulty attracting fans, the Buccaneers are a major draw. This fall, WTVT launched a Bucs' postgame show that will follow six game telecasts this season.
CBS affiliate WTSP attracts strong advertiser interest from the tremendous popularity in this market of the syndie shows Wheel of Fortune and jeopardy!.The game strips, which air 7-8 p.m., earned a 12.9/22 and 11.6/19 respectively in households in July, beating not only their time-period competitors but also every evening and late newscast in the market.
In addition to hiring Michaelson as news director, WTSP this year tapped John Harding to anchor its morning newscast. Harding previously was a weekend anchor/ reporter for KTHV-TV, Gannett's CBS affiliate in Little Rock, Ark.
Hearst-Argyle's WMOR has been working to boost its meager ratings. The station was the market's first WB affiliate, with the call letters WWWB-TV. After losing the WB affiliation three years ago to Sinclair Broadcast Group's WTTA, WWWB became Independent outlet WIOR. The station double-runs syndie repeats of Just Shoot Me from 6-6:30 and 7-7:30 p.m.
Current WB affiliate WTTA is also struggling. Like WMOR, WTTA averages a 2 rating sign-on-to-sign-off. VV=As schedule includes the syndicated Everybody Loves Raymond, which the outlet double-runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Two other broadcast TV outlets in the market are Paxson Communications' WXPX and Entravision Communications' Univision affiliate VEA. As part of a joint sales agreement with WFLA, WXPX rebroadcasts WFLA's 6 p.m. newscast at 6:30 and again at 10 p.m.
Competing with the broadcast TV outlets is Bay News 9, a 24-hour local news channel operated by Time Warner Cable. Time Warner is the dominant cable operator in the market and controls the local interconnect, Tampa Bay Interconnect. Comcast also controls some cable subs in the market. Cable penetration in the DMA is about 75 percent, slightly above the 71 percent average for the country's top 50 markets, according to Scarborough Research (see chart). Scarborough also estimates that 17 percent of the market subscribes to satellite TV service, above the top-50 market average of 15 percent.
Each of the three largest cities in the market-Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-is served by its own daily newspaper. The largest is the St. Petersburg Times, owned by the St. Petersburg-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies. The Times' average daily circulation for the six months ended Sept. 30 was 312,695, an increase of 1.7 percent; Sunday circ advanced 2.2 percent, to 396,557.
Media General's Tampa Tribune had average daily circulation of 199,976 in the six months ended in September, flat with the same period a year earlier. The Tribune's Sunday circ declined 1.4 percent, to 286,896. The Tribune is the largest of 25 dailies owned by Media General.
Both papers dominate on their home turf (see ABC chart on page 18), the Tribune in Tampa's Hillsborough County and the Times in St. Petersburg's Pinellas County. Still, the competitors continue attempts to win over subscribers in each other's territory.
Last summer, Steve M. Weaver was promoted to president and publisher of the Tribune, succeeding Reid Ashe, who was promoted to president and COO of Media General. Weaver joined the Tribune in January 2000 as vp of sales and marketing.
On July 17, the Tribune introduced a total makeover, including a new masthead. The new look coincided with the paper's retrofitting of its presses to a narrower 50-inch web width. "It's a complete redesign, both in look and in content," says Donna M. Reed, Tribune managing editor. The paper has added many new features, in part because of the paper's new size and also as the result of reader feedback, Reed says. Among the most prominent additions is a regular newsmaker feature on page IA about a local, national or international figure.
Another major element of the Tribune's redesign is the revamped second page of each section-News, Metro, Sports, Features and Business. For the most part, the second pages are now free of advertising and do not have jumped stories. Each page 2 also has a rotating daily theme. In the Sports section, for example, agate type reporting game scores was moved from page 2 to the back of the section. The second page now includes a regular column, a themed story on a particular subject, as well as "Two-Minute Drill," a roundup of nongame news items. The new page 2s are designed to anchor information in the same place for busy readers, Reed says.
The St. Petersburg Times this year has made some marketing gains in Tampa, the Trib's backyard. The Times agreed to a marketing deal with the Ice Palace in downtown Tampa, replacing the Tribune in the home of the market's National Hockey League team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Times also launched a partnership with International Plaza, a high-end regional shopping mall in West Tampa adjacent to Tampa International Airport. As part of that deal, the Times is the only newspaper sold in International Plaza; the mall features oversized displays of the Times' front pages in its storefronts.
The Times this year combined its Homes and Real Estate sections into a single department. The paper also recently launched a report on personal health and medicine that appears in its feature section on Tuesdays.
In July, the Times raised its newsstand price from a quarter to 3 5 cents in most parts of the market. "In spite of that, we continue to show circulation gains," says Paul Tash, Times editor and president. "I attribute that to the value our single-copy readers place on the newspaper." The paper's coverage of events connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has attracted new readers, Tash adds.
Earlier this year, the Times hired Beth Sholar from Thomson Newspapers as its new chief technology officer, responsible for all of the paper's Web-publishing efforts and computer systems. Last week, the paper welcomed Joe DeLuca, formerly of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, as its new operations director.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which is owned by the New York Times Co., covers Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties. The paper's average daily circ is 95,164 and its Sunday circ is 120,559, both of which were flat year-overyear. The Herald-Tribune also controls a 24hour local cable news and information service, SNN (Six News Now), which is carried on Comcast Cable systems throughout Sarasota and Charlotte counties, as well as in parts of Manatee and Lee counties. The sixyear-old SNN is the only 24-hour cable news channel entirely operated by and from a print newsroom.
This highly competitive newspaper market also includes Knight Ridder's Bradenton Herald (daily circ 40,324, up 3.4 percent; Sunday circ 47,259, up almost 1 percent), which dominates Manatee County.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater radio market is ranked 21 st in the country by Arbitron. Three major broadcast groups control almost 90 percent of the market's annual radio ad revenue, according to BIA Financial Network. Clear Channel Communications has the largest share, with nearly 41 percent via its eight outlets in the market (see chart on page 16). Infinity and Cox are the other two big players.
Last March, Todd Clemm, better known as "Bubba the Love Sponge," returned to the Tampa airwaves spouting apologies on WXTB-FM, Clear Channel's Rock outlet. Popular morning host Clemm was suspended following a Feb. 27 stunt parodying Survivor, in which a wild pig was castrated and slaughtered on the air. Dozens of advertisers pulled their spots after an animal rights organization, Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow, mounted a campaign against the shock jock.
Two companies largely dominate Tampa's out-of-home ad business-Viacom Outdoor and Clear Channel Outdoor. Viacom offers about 1,100 rotary and permanent bulletin positions throughout the DMA, says Patti Blass, Viacom Outdoor general manager for the Tampa Bay area. The company also has ad kiosks in the numerous malls that dot the area. Clear Channel controls more than 2,000 bulletin facings in the market. The company also offers premiere squares, premiere panels, 30-sheet posters and transit shelters.
Copyright VNU eMedia, Inc. Nov 26, 2001