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THE TAMPA BAY-ST. PETERSBURG (SARASOTA) MARKET, ALONG FLORIDA'S GULF COAST, is now the country's 13th-largest television market, according to Nielsen Media Research's ranking of the top 210 markets for the 2002-03 broadcast season. The market swelled by almost 52,000 viewers from 2001 to 2002 to a total of 1.62 million TV homes, Nielsen reports-the largest gain for any market in the U.S.
One of the DMA's top growth areas is the suburbs of Tampa, in Hillsborough County. While many parts of the market, such as Clearwater, have traditionally attracted retirees, younger, working families make up a good portion of the DMA's new growth. "One of the misconceptions about Tampa is that it's somewhat old." says Joe Pomilla, director of sales at Media General's NBC affiliate WFLA-TV. "The Tampa metro is actually younger than Orlando," but doesn't have the marketing clout of a Disney World to help promote that fact, adds Pomilla.
WFLA is the market's perennial overall news leader. In July, WFLA moved its locally produced show Daytime to 10 a.m., the slot formerly held by the The Sally Jessy Raphael Show. It also introduced a new midday newscast at 11 a.m. Eric Land, WFLA president and general manager, says that rather than go up against the other stations at noon, he decided to launch an 11 a.m. newscast to avoid news clutter in the time period. Also in July, the station chose not to renew the contract of sports anchor Chris Thomas. Land says he expects to name a successor shortly.
WFLA rebroadcasts its 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news on Paxson Communications' Pax TV outlet WXPX. However, WFLA scrapped a 10 p.m. newscast it had been producing for WXPX last spring because Pax decided it did not want to continue paying WFLA to produce it, says Land.
Fox Television Stations' owned-and-operated WTVT produces eight hours of local news a day, far more than any other station in the market. While WFLA may be tops in the market overall, Brian Fields, WTVT director of programming and research, says the race is extremely close in the key adults 25-54 and 18-49 demos from ratings book to book. WTVT's early-evening newscasts at 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. often rival WFLA's early news, says Fields. WTVT is...