Content area
Full Text
WITH ITS HISTORY AND CULTURE FIRMLY ENTRENCHED IN ITS MEXICAN HERITAGE, San Diego is bustling with activity in both business and the military sectors. Companies based in the city include telecom giant Qualcotnm as well as many important bio-tech firms. The U.S. Marines' training base, Camp Pendleton, is located just north of the city, which is also a major port for the U.S. Navy. As for professional sports, Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres officially opened their new $449 million Petco Park downtown ballpark on April 8.
NBC station KNSD, die only owned-andoperated broadcast TV station in the market, is also die only local station with a street-side studio, which is modeled after the Today show. This year KNSD has capitalized on momentous NBC programming events, such as the final season of Friends and the Olympics. KNSD localized the Friends finale by holding a castmember look-alike contest and a trivia contest from January until the last show on May 16. KNSD also kicked off its Olympics coverage a year early-in Aug. 2003, by launching weekly segments in its 6 p.m. news and a special Olympics Web site.
"On the programming side, the biggest thing to hit this market in the past year has been Ellen [The Ellen OeGeneres Show] at 3 p.m. in our news lead-in position," says Phyllis Schwartz, KNSD president/gm. "[Ellen] has improved the time period by 170 percent Mayto-May and made us very competitive on our afternoon newscasts for the first time in years."
For many years, KGTV, McGraw-Hill Broadcasting's ABC affiliate, was die dominant station in the market, ranked No. 26 in the country with 1.03 million TV households. However, competition has intensified and KGTV is no longer the powerhouse that it once was. Yet the station still manages to win the news race at 6 p.m. in adults 25-54.
In programming, KGTV added The Tony Danza Show at 9 a.m. and The Lany Elder Show at 3 p.m. this fall. Ken Rycyzyn, KGTV director of sales, says San Diego's television advertising landscape has remained stable and will likely finish flat over the approximately 2 percent gain it enjoyed in 2003.
"Our market and all California markets are different from other markets across die country," says Rycyzyn. "We got political money...