By Steve Passwaiter and Rick Ducey
For broadcasters, it is an article of faith that “localism” is a point of differentiation that adds value to their operations. Localism tends to mean local news, sports, weather, traffic, local events, coverage of local government and other promotional and volunteer involvement in the community. There’s a lot of chatter …

New Year’s Greetings from BIA/Kelsey.

So, the good news.

2009 is over. Thank God.

We head into the New Year severely chastened by the historic revenue declines of the current one. The numbers for 2009 don’t bear repeating. They were several shades of awful.

There are signs of a modest ad economy recovery as we enter January 2010. The broadcast networks are reporting an active scatter market. This makes the network execs that decided to hold back inventory at the upfront look like good market callers. Some of the larger radio groups are reporting a decent December assuming that flat is the new up! Online ad activity is regaining its health as well after a down year on the display side.

The announcement that Oprah will end her broadcast television show upon its 25th anniversary in 2011 has created quite a stir. Her category leading position for the past 20+ years has led to her show being a “must buy” for many advertisers trying to reach certain demographic groups. Consequently, local television stations have spent considerable …

By Steve Passwaiter and Rick Ducey
WZMY-TV or “MyTV New England,” is a local broadcast television station that covers the Boston, MA marketplace from its perch in Derry, NH. It has been evolving its own hyper local format since ShootingStar Broadcasting bought it in 2004. CEO/President Diane Sutter says the goal has been, “to combine …

By Rick Ducey and Steve Passwaiter
LIN TV Corporation (TVL/NYSE) is a public company with 27 television stations in 17 markets, reaching about 11.5 million households each week. This makes LIN one of the largest television group owners in the country. LIN’s stations typically rank first or second in the Nielsen ratings, both overall and in …

At the recently concluded NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia, BIA/Kelsey offered a session on the future opportunities in local radio. As we understand that not everyone had the chance to attend the recent gathering, all of us at BIA/Kelsey wanted to share the contents of our presentation.
There are some trends and research …

In the past few days, two large media companies – Time Warner and Newsday (Cablevision) – have announced that they are either moving towards or are seriously considering restricting access to their content on the Internet. In the case of Time Warner, CEO Jeff Bewkes suggested that only existing subscribers (through cable, telco or DBS …

Posted by: Steve Passwaiter
Vice President, Business Development
If there was ever an industry that could use an army of missionaries, it’s commercial radio. According to news reports this past week, a new group of PR and communications professionals have formed the Radio Communicators Group. This new group has two goals: 1) to effectively …