Standing Alone With Hyperlocal In Boston

Diane Sutter embarked on a bold experiment in 2004, entering the Boston market with a standalone, independent TV station and a business plan that called for attracting viewers and commensurate advertising dollars with what's come to be called hyperlocal programming.

Now five years into the experiment, Sutter and WZMY are hanging in there, even though TV revenues in the market as a whole have steadily declined since she arrived and her competition keeps pressing in.

She is keeping a sharp focus on local goings-on and, in 2006, she was able to win the MNT affiliation from Fox. In the scramble for the affiliation, it helped that Sutter already had the MyTV moniker that Fox coveted.

Sutter earned the right to take her chance with WZMY. Prior to forming ShootingStar Broadcasting to buy and operate stations in 1996, she assembled a long resume in broadcast sales and station management that culminated with her running the TV station division of Roy Disney's Shamrock Broadcasting. ShootingStar also owned the CBS affiliate in Abilene, Texas, for a spell.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, Sutter acknowledges that life would be easier if WZMY were part of a duopoly with a Big 4 network affiliate, but she also makes clear her determination to press on by teaming with others in the market, staying as local as she can and taking advantage of the opportunities inherent in digital.

An edited transcript:

Boston has experienced something like 20 straight down quarters stretching back even before the general economic downturn. What's going on up there?

Boston is one of two cities -- San Francisco is the other -- that has been challenged for a lot longer time. The factors challenging the markets could eventually affect other markets too.

Boston is the No. 2 cable-penetrated market in the country behind Honolulu. It's the No. 1 wired market for the Internet and you have also got high socioeconomic factors. You've got well-educated people with money, even in these economic times. It means they have greater choices. So it's a challenging time for the industry, but particularly for markets like San Francisco and Boston that have the demographic profile that they do.

You're licensed to Derry, N.H., on the fringe of the Boston market. Do you fully feel a part of the market?

Well, where the transmitter and the studio site are is very different from the coverage that you provide to the market. About 96.3 percent of the Boston market is satellite and cable and fiber. So no matter where you are, you have the opportunity to reach the entire market. The challenge is covering the divergent interests in a market this size.

So the benefit of having high cable and penetrations is that it puts you on equal footing with the stations in the center of the market.

That is true.

Comcast is the dominant cable operator in the market. Are they aggressive in local sales?

Yes, they are. Plus, we have two 24/7 sports channels and a 24/7 news channel. So you have a number of other entities competing with your over-the-air broadcast channels.

Have you had to retreat from your original hyperlocal strategy?

We've never veered from our mission. We were MyTV before My Network TV existed. Our goal was to be a hyperlocal station that put viewers on the air and interact with viewers much the way a radio station does. We continue to attend the local folk and seafood festivals and we sponsor major community events. We've always have viewers on the air. They do our IDs, promos and the buffers going in and out of programming.

We also do these My shows -- My Home and Garden, My Premiere Bride, My Favorite Restaurant, My Destination Cape Cod, My Destination Killington, all of which are 100-percent-local advertiser-driven shows, produced locally and aired locally.

And those are shows sponsored by the restaurants or destinations being featured.

They are. Actually, each of the segments is fully sponsored by the commercial outlet that we're interviewing.

Now that you are five years into this, what have you learned about the hyperlocal approach?

We continue to believe that local is more than just news. It includes being out in the community and making your viewers part of the station. I don't think we've changed our view on that at all.

What we've come to realize, however, is that your ability to be able to do this in a market the size of Boston is a bit more challenging than we thought. People have to drive two hours to go to an event. In a smaller market, it might be a half-hour drive. We understand that and we've learned to regionalize some of the things that we do.

So why did you give up on the news?