Combining news operations: How bad it can get

[mleach]

We've got a poster child for combined news operations just down the road from us: Youngstown, OH.

There are now only two TV newsrooms in the Mahoning Valley, WFMJ/21 (NBC), and WKBN/27-WYTV/33-WYFX-17/62 (CBS, ABC, Fox).

WFMJ is owned and operated by the local family which owns the Youngstown Vindicator newspaper. WKBN is owned by New Vision, along with sister LPTV/DTV Fox affiliate WYFX, and runs Parkin Broadcasting's WYTV.

WYFX sort of "doesn't count" in this, as it airs a single 10 PM newscast, and didn't exist as a separate operation...WKBN, under previous ownership, started it from scratch a few years ago.

But WYTV is now swallowed into the Sunset Boulevard operation.

It could be worse. WYTV maintains a nominal separate presence - they moved the "33 News" virtual set over from 33's former home, and have mostly separate anchors. But the primary anchor, Stan Boney, is the station's long-time weatherman - and STILL does weather along with news anchoring.

Talk about an economic disaster area, Youngstown is as bad as it gets. I'm amazed that anyone is advertising on local TV these days. The newscasts that I have viewed in that area are not very good; though I think that the NBC station seemed to best to me. Interesting side note, bowling gets more airtime in Youngstown market sportscasts than in any other place I've ever been!

Not to mention that, at least just outside of Y-town, most suburban areas can also watch Cleveland or Pittsburgh stations too. That can't be good for business either in that many parts of the market need not watch the local stations. For example, I was in Hubbard, OH when severe weather was coming through and the event was covered just as well on Pittsburgh stations as it was on the locals.

I know because my hotel had full local cable (see other thread)!

Youngstown has seen better days. Some years back there was a book written about Youngstown's now-defunct amusement park Idora Park wrtten by Charles Jacques. Even though the book was mostly about Idora it did mention that back in the 50s, Youngstown was actually Ohio's third largest TV market ( behind Cincinatti and Cleveland but bigger than Columbus ) and Youngstown was America's 40th largest city. Not sure just how accurate that is since Charles Jacques writes about old amusement parks and seems to know little about TV but of course that doesnt stop him from writing about it. There were some errors in his books about Kennywood such as mentioning WTEA-TV channel 4 rather than WTAE and calling WPXI...WXIP. Well at least he got KDKA right and WDTV but Kennywood didn't advertise on WDTV in 1947 as one of his books had mentioned. WDTV/KDKA didn't go on the air until 2 years later.