THREE-PRONGED PLAN FOR DIGITAL TV SUCCESS

The Dispatch Printing Company is to Columbus, Ohio, what the Tribune Co. is to Chicago—that is, a dominant media presence.

The Dispatch's holdings in the state capital include The Columbus Dispatch; WBNS, a longtime CBS affiliate; an AM-FM combo with the same calls; and the Ohio News Network, a statewide cable outlet.

The Columbus TV and radio assets along with the outlying NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, WTHR, are organized as the Dispatch Broadcast Group and managed by President and CEO Michael Fiorile.

In this edited interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, Fiorile says he is looking for growth through the Web, digital channels and an even tighter focus on local, regional and state news.

To make sure the digital channels reach all local viewers, Fiorile says the government must mandate that cable operators carry them. And, Fiorile says, he is not alone in his willingness to accept concrete public service requirements in exchange for a multicast must-carry requirement.

From the outside, Columbus looks to be one part Ohio State sports and one part politics. You just lost the local rights to Ohio State football and basketball at WBNS-TV. How did you let that happen?       

All of the Big Ten sports are moving to their own network that will go on the air in late this year.

And how much programming is involved?   

Not much in terms of football. Typically, we were only entitled to maybe two games. But we have a full schedule of basketball.

And you'll be losing that next year?

We will.

That's a bad thing, right? That's a lot of highly rated programming, isn't it?

I will tell you the rights to that programming are not inexpensive, meaning the margin is not as attractive as we would have liked. Also, we acquired the rights at a time when CBS's primetime wasn't what it is today. The network wasn't real happy about it over the years and more so now that their shows are playing better. They're not disappointed the Big Ten is leaving us.

But those games put you right in the middle of Columbus life?      

Yes, but there's other OSU product that we can carry. There's baseball and there's women's basketball, although they are certainly not as attractive as the men's basketball and football.

The other thing that we will continue to do is a lot of special programming around the Buckeyes. We do a preseason primetime hour. We do an hour before the Michigan [football] game. We do a lot of enterprise stuff.

How do you plan to grow the broadcast group?

We're actively pursuing the Web strategy. Like all broadcasters, we have to get better at it. I just read something the other day in Editor & Publisher. It shows newspapers are enjoying about 10% of Web spending, while local TV is getting 4% and radio less than 2%. We broadcasters need to get better.

Do you think that broadcasters missed getting the jump on this a few years back?

I think so. Newspapers, with more of a command market presence, have a leg up. It's easier for them to enter into a new technology like this. If all the TV stations in a market combined their forces online, it would be more substantial.

But I think we do fairly well. Based on market research, we're seeing more clicks to our television Web site than any other TV station in town.

Why aren't you and Dispatch working together on this?

We are. Our Web site and all of our digital resources are combined.

But you have two distinct Web sites. It's just the back offices that are combined, right?

Right. Having separate brands, separate Web sites, is smart, not unlike Procter & Gamble which sells Ivory soap and Camay soap and Zest soap. They could sell just Procter & Gamble soap, but they wouldn't have a share of the market that they have. In fact, our mission is to create more sites and more brands.

What are the advantages of owning both a newspaper and broadcast stations in a market?

We've been very fortunate that we hired an editorial convergence manager who shuttles between the two newsrooms and works stories both in video and in print. When the paper picks up a story that can play best in video, we'll often do a series and then culminate it with a video at the end of the week on the TV station.

We also have a sales manager who works with advertisers and tries to garner a larger share by exposing them to television and radio and print.

For instance, this week is our annual home and garden show and we'll sell an advertiser a booth and then package it with television and radio and online and newspaper. All we hear from advertisers is how we made it easy for them to buy all this media because they're often not sophisticated enough to have an ad agency. We've had great fun with the multiple properties here.