Since WFLA was practically Media General's first station, most Tampa Bay residents will oppose the merger, because this is one of Media General's flagships stations along with WRIC-TV in MG's hometown of Richmond, VA. Also, News Channel 8 will have to make a new unrecognizable website name, like all Nexstar stations.
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Nexstar & Media General.
- Thread starter ChocoMingo
- Start date
Hopefully, WFLA TV (I'm assuming the WFLA caller letters will remain) will come up with a website name that will catch on and I would think they would heavily promote the name of the new website to familiarize their viewers with the new website name.
As a former Media General employee, I can assure you most Tampa Bay residents have no idea who or what Media General is, nor will they gather torches and pitchforks to oppose the merger. It won't even register.
NewsChannel 8, on the other hand, has had excellent local name recognition for more than 20 years. The new owners would be out of their minds to rebrand the station. That said, dumber things have happened.
I cannot imagine the iconic call letters will go anywhere. Remember how desperately Channel 8 worked to get them back around 35 years ago, when it changed to WXFL?
[For the uninitiated: Until 1983, Media General owned a TV station (Channel 8), radio properties (WFLA-AM and -FM) and a newspaper (the Tampa Tribune) in this market. Because of federal regulations, the FCC forced Media General to divest the radio stations. Since the radio stations were assigned the call letters three decades before the TV station was born, it got the right to keep them and Channel 8 had to change its calls. The TV station spent the next six years trying to reclaim its identity — even as other TV stations in the state tried to get them because of their value and recognition. From what I understand, Channel 8 ended up providing cash and services (like weather reports and marketing) to the radio station to "lease" them back in 1989.]
WFLA's website, on the other hand, could stand some improvement ... but I can't imagine the new owners coming up with a better URL than what already exists, unless it's newschannel8.com. Interestingly, that URL currently goes to a station in Connecticut that is owned by LIN Television, which merged with Media General in 2014. Of course, that certainly could change.
As an aside, there was a plan, circa 2000, to make TBO.com the combined multimedia platform for the newspaper and the TV station — bringing tampatrib.com and wfla.com under one roof. That didn't really go over so well. One of the objections from the TV folks was losing the WFLA identity. That culture still exists — whether it's enough to keep the new bosses from making changes, well, that remains to be seen.
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I mean names like WOI's website WeAreIowa.com and WCWJ's website YourJAXTV.com. The only name I can think of is 8onyourside.com.
Yeah, I thought about that URL, too. It certainly could happen ... a lot depends how much local autonomy remains after the merger. My sense is that the Tampa team feels pretty comfortable with wfla.com. Of course, a pretty good argument can be made that call letters are a relic of the past, since increasingly fewer people are watching local TV over the air — or at all, for that matter — and many stations are selling their space on the broadcast spectrum, depending instead on cable and Internet for delivery.
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see as it plays out.
It won't affect the call letters, but only the URL website.
Right. Two separate thoughts in the same post.
This will be interesting to watch. I know that The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV have been sharing photogs and other staff for many years.
The TV industry in the Tampa Bay area has certainly changed since my retirement from WTVT in 2010.
The TV industry in the Tampa Bay area has certainly changed since my retirement from WTVT in 2010.
The formal arrangement between the Tribune and WFLA-TV ended in 2012, when Media General sold the newspaper to Revolution Capital. Occasionally, Tribune reporters appear as expert talking heads on Channel 8's newscasts — almost exclusively the beat writers for the pro sports teams — but it's rare anymore. The two media no longer share newsgathering resources.
Thanks for the update.
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