Television Battle Heats Up

Some days, Marty Houston wishes he was still sitting in front of a wood paneling backdrop fielding calls about the Hogs and riffing with co-host Ernie Witt Jr.
Houston, who hosted the lunch hour talk show “The Huddle” for 11 years on KPBI-TV, is now the station manager at the new Fox affiliate KFTA-TV, Channel 24 in Fort Smith, which debuted in its current form on the air in August 2006.
Instead of spending time on the phone with college students just rolling out of bed or grumpy old men, Houston passes his time dealing with television syndicates, managing a local newscast and waiting on the FCC.
And waiting. And waiting some more.
License transfers and renewal applications are piling up while the ever-backlogged Federal Communications Commission twiddles its thumbs debating whether or not blurted-out f-bombs on live broadcasts should earn fines for affiliates.
Meanwhile, the local battle for television viewers is escalating in the $36 million broadcast network advertising market, both in capital investment and in the barbs the stations are slinging through their on-air promos.
The designated market area made up of nine Arkansas counties and two in Oklahoma is now ranked No. 102 in the nation, up four spots from 2004 with about 280,510 television-watching households.
Although Houston’s life is a bit more stressful than it used to be, he was around for the KPBI launch in 1989 and said there is no comparison.
KPBI’s weak and fuzzy signal may have been fine for “The Huddle,” but it made watching a sporting event or other programming nearly unbearable. Houston’s show was also the only local programming KPBI and parent company Equity Broadcasting Inc. ever produced.
With a High Definition signal and a professional, larger metro-style newscast, KFTA is light years ahead and Fox corporate has taken notice.
“I’m happier where we’re starting this one,” Houston said. “Fox network is very happy with us. They have shared what they have seen with the growth of the station and what they’ve seen with primetime numbers. They’re happy with the newscast and happy with the HD.
“They couldn’t be more proud of how we’ve started off with this so far.”

Ratings Battle
According to Julie Magnuson, vice president of the Mullikin Agency in Springdale, ad rates for a 30-second spot in a 6 p.m. newscast range from $250 to $450. At 10 p.m., those rates increase to $350 to $650. During primetime, most ads start at $400 to $500 and for a highly rated show like “American Idol,” rates for a spot can cost $1,500 or more.
Based on the May Nielsen Media Research ratings for local newscasts, CBS-affiliate KFSM-TV, Channel 5 continues to hold its lead in the 11-county designated market area, which includes parts of Oklahoma (p. 31).
New owners Oak Hill Capital Partners equity group, doing business as Local TV LLC, bought nine stations, including KFSM, from The New York Times Co., for $575 million in late 2006. KSFM president and general manager Van Comer says the new owners are investing heavily in the station, repairing a long-broken relay tower in Benton County soon after the purchase as well as providing the funding to hire additional sales staff and reporters to cover Benton and Washington counties.
In June, Comer announced James Warner as the station’s news director and said for the first time the position would be manned from its Fayetteville bureau.
“Our new ownership is pro growth,” Comer said. “They’ve been very supportive of moving us forward with growth plans.”
In the ratings for May in the three-county market (Benton, Madison and Washington counties), ABC-affiliate KHBS/KHOG-TV, Channels 40/29 boasts the top spot (p.18). The station will soon be moving to 14,000 SF of space at The Peaks in Rogers, leaving behind its rundown studios in Fayetteville with plans for its first newscast from the new digs on Sept. 10.
The station will still have a news bureau and sports staff working in Fayetteville. General manager Jim Prestwood calls the move “an expansion, not an exit.”
The station has also promoted its Web site as No. 1 in the region.
KHBS/KHOG Prestwood said page view data from Alexa.com shows hometownchannel.com received around 1.3 million page views per month compared to 150,000 when it launched in 2001.
“We’re in real good shape,” Prestwood said. “We’ve been the leader in Northwest Arkansas for 20-plus years and we don’t want to lose that position.”
Prestwood said 40/29 has “worthy competitors” in the market but only named KFSM as one of them and with only his station and KFSM covering the entire 11-county DMA and with KNWA so low in the ratings, it’s clearly a two-horse race.

Aggressive Approach
NBC-affiliate KNWA-TV, Channel 51 — which neither subscribes to nor believes in the Nielsen numbers generated by viewer “diaries” that rate it third in both the 11- and 3-county markets — has the freedom to tout itself however it wants.
KNWA dropped its coverage of Fort Smith when Nexstar Broadcasting Inc. bought the station in 2004 and ran a scoreboard during May with a running tally of “local” stories that claimed to outpace its competitors by a wide margin.
However, KNWA, which doesn’t subscribe to Associated Press wire services, seems to rely on local newspapers for stories. On one recent newscast, stories about New Hope Road in Rogers, an electrical plant in Tontitown and 4th Fest appeared in virtually the same order and used some of the same phrasing as the stories appeared on a local daily paper’s Web site.
Rather than cite the paper, anchors often use the word “reportedly” instead.
Nexstar Broadcasting Inc. vice president and KWNA general manager Blake Russell downplayed the similarity between his newscasts and the daily papers.
“What we do and what we’re about is about relationships,” he said. “There seems to be a misconception about where we get content from.
“Am I in a battle right now about who is doing the story first? No. We’re about content and delivering the content the people have told us they want to see.”
The station has also used an aggressive approach to news, stalking Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles during the basketball coach hiring process and camping out in front of a local gas station and traveling as far as Denver putting questions to various oil company officials.
The rabid coverage of Razorback scandals and “breaking news” that later didn’t play out led the 40/29 sports department to run a promo saying it “Reports facts, not rumors.”
Russell said his station was ahead of its competitors by shifting away from Fort Smith to the growing two-county area three years ago and points out they were the first to open a bureau in Rogers.
“We know we have a superior product,” Russell said. “People enjoy watching us. Our product is unique. Our competitors are playing both sides of the fence.”
Or, more accurately, the mountain.
Prestwood and Comer said they have no plans to abandon their coverage of Fort Smith. KFSM still originates its newscast from Fort Smith and 40/29 uses a split screen format with Donna Bragg in Fort Smith and Craig Cannon in Fayetteville.
Comer does not subscribe to any strategy that doesn’t include topping the entire DMA.
“Our focus is winning all of it,” he said. “That may sound too widespread, but that’s the reality. I’m not giving up on any part of the DMA.
“I don’t discount any competitor. KNWA is focused on Northwest Arkansas and I want to beat them in Northwest Arkansas. 40/29 is focused on the region and I want to beat them in the region.”

Fox Worthy
Nexstar sold KFTA to Mission Broadcasting Inc. for $5.6 million on April 19, 2006, but the backlogged Federal Communications Commission has yet to approve the transfer.
KNWA and KFTA currently are operating as a hybrid operation with the Fox affiliate sharing management, sales staff and the resources of KNWA to produce its own newscast at 9 p.m.
KFTA drew a 1.6 rating in the 11-county DMA for the 9 p.m. newscast in May, (and a 1.7 rating for the 3-county market) a fairly decent number considering its short existence. KNWA was rated a 2.9 at 10 p.m. for the DMA in the same period.
The newscast is built to look different with anchor Dana Sargent delivering the news standing rather than from behind a desk, content from Fox News, exclusive “American Idol” coverage and the sports segment at 15 minutes after the hour rather than far later in the show as is standard at the other stations.
The directive from Fox was to not put the newscast on at 10 p.m., Houston said.
“That’s been the philosophy of Fox all along,” Houston said. “Don’t run the newscast at the same time. Don’t make it look the same. It’s all about the look and pace of it. It makes it more palatable to those tuning in and watching it.”
KFTA simulcasts KNWA programming from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and picks up NBC’s late night shows. As long as he gets a go-ahead from the FCC, Houston says he’ll have to hit the ground running.
“We would start acquiring programming and start making those preparations to program it 100 percent separately [from KNWA],” Houston said.
Nexstar, which announced May 17 it had enlisted Goldman-Sachs to help it pursue the possibility of selling KNWA and Little Rock sister station KARK-TV, intends for KFTA to leave the nest as soon as the FCC allows.
“Our intentions are for it to fully stand alone with a unique product,” Russell said. “We hope to be able to deliver that very soon.”