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Interesting thing I've found here, gang.

This page is from an apparent TV "insider" type web site called "News Blues", and shows current DMA rankings for the 2007 year.

FSM/NWA gained 7,000 TV households since the last ranking putting it up 2 places, so I'll venture that this includes the special census numbers. (Still don't know that for sure, though.) It reflects, however, this market's new "102" ranking. Not great shakes, IMO, but FAR ahead of where this market was 20 years ago.

Now, I don't see this happening in the near future, but:

- If the DMA could pick up McDonald County, MO (and I don't think there's another DMA out there where a county in the dominant metro area isn't in that same metro's DMA...but that's the case here as McDonald is in the NWA metro yet also is in the Joplin, MO/Pittsburg, KS DMA as has been noted before) it might gain roughly 8,000 new TV households;

- If the DMA could pick up Carroll County, AR from the Springfield, MO DMA (as some newspapers here are furiously trying to do) it could gain roughly 10,000 new TV households;

- and if the DMA could pick up Delaware County, OK from the Tulsa, OK DMA (as Siloam Springs has "suburbs" in Delaware and there are apparently an ever growing number of NWA commuters from that county) it could gain roughly 14,000 new TV households...household population numbers based on census numbers reported from Wikipedia.

That would be an increase of roughly 32,000 households and would put FSM/NWA right around #95 in the DMA list (current numbers) around Waco-Temple-Bryan, TX. Getting those other counties (most likely, IMO, 1. McDonald; 2. Carroll; 3. Delaware) is a medium to long shot I'd think as they've likely been in those other cities' sphere of influence for a century or more.

Continued growth in Benton and Washington (and the FSM area on a more limited basis) will be the DMA's best shot to move up, IMO.

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I was in Sacramento last week and noticed something I found really interesting. HD content is really pushed hard. All local news is in HD, the remotes, helicopters, high school football, all HD. It seemed like every other commercial was from a local station, Comcast or the new Best Buy "Mahogany Theatre" pushing HD. It was surprising to see that much emphasis on HD. Since in NWA HD content seems to be pretty much ignored.

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I was in Sacramento last week and noticed something I found really interesting. HD content is really pushed hard. All local news is in HD, the remotes, helicopters, high school football, all HD. It seemed like every other commercial was from a local station, Comcast or the new Best Buy "Mahogany Theatre" pushing HD. It was surprising to see that much emphasis on HD. Since in NWA HD content seems to be pretty much ignored.

Jim, interesting...I think that will eventually change in this market.

Another thing...if (IF) somehow any pro sport in NWA could somehow team up with Little Rock only for a combined FSM/NWA - LR/PB media coverage, they'd have (according to new numbers) 819,000 TV households...putting them on par or near the San Antonio, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Salt Lake City DMAs. Don't know that it will happen but with the symbiotic relationship NWA and LR seem to have, who knows?

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What do you mean, Mith?

Those two stations have suddenly been playing a lot of commercials asking everyone to tell their congressmen to support local programming. When I looked more into it out of curiousity I found out it has more to do with the fact that the two stations are owned by the same group and they are basically running a joint news program. The weather and sports on the new FOX are done by people from KNWA, even Dana Sargeant the main anchor still appears occasionally on KNWA. There are differences, the new FOX focuses more on Ft Smith and the region. I wonder if they did that to try to make it a little different and at least try to not run into this problem. Overall I don't have a problem with the new FOX and it's news. But I can see why people might be concerned over this trend that's been happening. What if the group that owns these two stations suddenly bought channel 5?

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What do y'all think about the changes to The Morning News Web site?

Diplodocus,

It's clean looking, but there are some scripts (.swf files?) that cause my browser to crash at times. It's still aesthetically pleasing, though...it's not easy to make lavender colors look as "soft" on a browser as your design team has.

I'd like to ask you a question.

I've said multiple times here that the NWA market may need to expand, but may be hard pressed to. In your Rogers paper, you say on the front headline that it serves among other communities Berryville, Eureka Springs and Holiday Island (all in Carroll County).

How do you see efforts to make NWA media (mainly newspaper and television) dominant in other adjacent places currently not in the DMA such as McDonald (MO), Carroll (AR) and Delaware (OK) counties? Think it can be done given the long dominance of Tulsa, Springfield and Joplin in those areas? I know your company has bought the McDonald County Press.

(EDIT: Diplodocus, are you privvy to estimates on how big they think this DMA will get (in terms of population) in the next couple of decades?)

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Looks like today might be the last day to get KHOG HD on Cox. Unless they can work something out but I think today was the deadline. Not sure if anyone had any interest in the new CW but looks like NWA will have to wait. We appararently still don't have a local affiliate. I guess the former local UPN and WB haven't gotten it. I know the former FOX and UPN were owned by the same company, was the WB also? That company has taken a hit losing both the FOX and UPN.

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I'm curious to hear some opinions about the whole KHOG HD and Cox situation. Who does everyone fault about this? Do you think the owners of KHOG are being greedy trying to get Cox to pay them for their HD signal? Or is Cox greedy for charging extra for their HD services and basically providing them when they recieve them for free? I'm assuming that none of the stations charge Cox for using their HD signals and I guess the owners of KHOG were the first to make a big deal about this. Anyway I was just curious to see what opinions everyone had.

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I'm curious to hear some opinions about the whole KHOG HD and Cox situation. Who does everyone fault about this? Do you think the owners of KHOG are being greedy trying to get Cox to pay them for their HD signal? Or is Cox greedy for charging extra for their HD services and basically providing them when they recieve them for free? I'm assuming that none of the stations charge Cox for using their HD signals and I guess the owners of KHOG were the first to make a big deal about this. Anyway I was just curious to see what opinions everyone had.

I'd believe the part about Cox wanting charging extra for FREE HD! Cox is practically a criminal organization. I think people should have a choice whether they want to pay for HD channels since not everyone has an HD ready TV.

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I really don't know who to blame. Cox is the much larger company that seems to have a monopoly in most markets. So I would guess that I would have to blame them. This whole deal just hurts the cox HD customer (like myself). I can't watch standard def now days. I am too spoiled. I will be going by Cox this week on another matter but believe me I will be talking to them about this.

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Good news in the world of newspapers!! Demand for more pages in the Northwest edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will be met in about one year when an addition to the Lowell press is complete. Apparently, the paper has to order another unit, which won't be operational until the third week of October 2007. The complete cost of the unit and installation is about $ 4 million. Tbis takes so long because they have to order the machine from Europe and it takes a year to assemble. There's been some estimates that the Northwest Edition will have either eight additional color pages or up to 16 additional black-and white pages!!

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Good news in the world of newspapers!! Demand for more pages in the Northwest edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will be met in about one year when an addition to the Lowell press is complete. Apparently, the paper has to order another unit, which won't be operational until the third week of October 2007. The complete cost of the unit and installation is about $ 4 million. Tbis takes so long because they have to order the machine from Europe and it takes a year to assemble. There's been some estimates that the Northwest Edition will have either eight additional color pages or up to 16 additional black-and white pages!!

I am looking forward to it but I'm a little skeptical. If there's so much demand why does there seem to be so many central Arkansas stories in the Northwest section? It's not too uncommon for there to be a central Arkansas story on the front page even.

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There's been a lot of angry people up here because we don't have the new CW network. A lady at work practically screamed last week when she found out she couldn't watch Dawsons Creek along with her other favorite shows.

To be honest I don't think there's anything on there that I plan to watch. But you'd still think as far in advance everyone knew about this that someone would have already planned for this. Maybe the network didn't want either station that previously carried UPN or the WB.

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  • 2 months later...

Interesting article in the "American Thinker" blog today about the New York Times company's decision to dump its broadcast properties including KFSM-TV Channel 5.

The gist as I read it: the papers may be losing money so fast that they needed more cash to keep everything going and the apparent-steady-if-not-good cash flow of the broadcast properties might not have been able to bring as much as the asset sale apparently did for the "ol' gray lady".

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Interesting article in the "American Thinker" blog today about the New York Times company's decision to dump its broadcast properties including KFSM-TV Channel 5.

The gist as I read it: the papers may be losing money so fast that they needed more cash to keep everything going and the apparent-steady-if-not-good cash flow of the broadcast properties might not have been able to bring as much as the asset sale apparently did for the "ol' gray lady".

Yeah I've been hearing those newspaper problems for a little while now. More and more people are getting their news from tv, radio and now the internet.

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I'll just say I strongly disagree with splitting NWA from FSM. Personally, I think KNWA/KFTA is awful because a) there isn't enough interesting news to focus soley on one region over the other and b) their newscasts just aren't very good.

Of course, I am biased having grown up in Fort Smith.

For those complaining, over the years there has definitely been a shift in focus at all the stations towards NWA (KFSM studios at NWA Mall; KHOG) and the FSM area is equally displeased as those here who believe NWA is somehow getting slighted. Fort Smith isn't growin at the rate of NWA, but it is not Pine Bluff or Muskogee either. Dropping coverage for 250,000 people isn't good business sense either.

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I'll just say I strongly disagree with splitting NWA from FSM. Personally, I think KNWA/KFTA is awful because a) there isn't enough interesting news to focus soley on one region over the other and b) their newscasts just aren't very good.

Of course, I am biased having grown up in Fort Smith.

For those complaining, over the years there has definitely been a shift in focus at all the stations towards NWA (KFSM studios at NWA Mall; KHOG) and the FSM area is equally displeased as those here who believe NWA is somehow getting slighted. Fort Smith isn't growin at the rate of NWA, but it is not Pine Bluff or Muskogee either. Dropping coverage for 250,000 people isn't good business sense either.

I don't know, it's not that I don't care what happens in the River Valley but I like having news focusing on NWA. True all the stations are covering NWA more. But they pretty much have to, this is where more and more of the population is. I think some people in NWA feel they are still getting 'secondary' coverage even though the NWA metro is quite a bit larger than Ft Smith's. I think even if another station moved it's main studio operations to NWA but still covered Ft Smith would still be a good idea. There certainly isn't any way the other stations would follow KNWA's example and cut out almost all of Ft Smith. As you said there's too many people to ignore down there. But maybe NWA is also large enough that it should really get the main focus. It seems the other stations have their main operations based out of Ft Smith not NWA.

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