Merging Media Powers Cox's Digital Drive

Like other legacy media companies, Cox Media Group with 15 TV stations, eight daily newspapers and 85 radio stations has spawned a plethora of digital services. But the new president, Doug Franklin, says much work still needs to be done on the digital front if CMG is to be the force in the future as it has been in the past.

"You’re going to see us focus more of our attention ... on how we’re structured to drive our digital side of our business," he says in this interview with TVNewsCheck. "We have to have a much more diverse portfolio of products to complement the very strong broadcast, print and direct mail businesses that we have."

Franklin says that the newspapers' future may be all digital, specifically a service built for tablets with, he hopes, two revenue streams: subscriptions and advertising. And as part of the stepped-up digital strategy, all the properties are moving to a common digital platform.

According to Franklin, all is going well with the 2008 reorganization of the legacy media along geographic lines rather than by media. And he is pleased with the degree to which reporters for the different media have been able to work together — an example, he believes, of cooperation without homogenization.

Franklin is a newspaper guy who has been with Cox for more than 30 years. When the company was reorganized, he was one of two executive vice presidents reporting to Sandy Schwartz. Last March, when Schwartz was named president of Manhein, Cox's auto remarketing company, Franklin stepped up and took charge of GMG, which also includes the ValPak direct mail operation, Cox Reps and more than a dozen non-daily publications.

An edited transcript of the interview:

Did the 2009 reorganization achieved what you wanted to achieve?

What I would say here is, financially, culturally and operationally, it has gone better than we expected. Our financial performance has been strong. We continue to gain best practices and really good experiences with it and we are growing great media managers because they have a much broader view of the media businesses, the strengths and weaknesses of each.

But what kind of synergies or efficiencies have you achieved?

There are a lot of best practices we can share because we’re primarily all in the same business of gathering relevant audiences and profitably matching them up with advertisers — whether that be newspapers, radio, TV, digital or direct mail. The sales side is where we have the greatest opportunities. I can rattle off all kinds of good examples of best practices.

Go ahead.

So, for example, because television has been in the people-meter business much longer than radio, we were able to take some of our TV experiences and apply that to some of our strategies in radio. Our radio group has always been a great research-based organization and we are using those skill sets to improve our newspapers and it has made a dramatic change in our newspapers — in the way we write, in the way we cover content. And that has helped our numbers. The different media have different relationships with their clients that help leverage each other. Newspapers tend to have deep relationships with large advertisers, while television tends to be more agency-related business. They have been able to open doors for each other and gain more sales.

How has the strategy evolved? You must have made some changes over the course of the past two years.

We have been relatively fortunate with what we have put together. We have a strong stable of group VPs that oversees our markets. Our general managers have been solid. I think you’re going to see us focus more of our attention in the future on how we’re structured to drive our digital side of our business. We have to have a much more diverse portfolio of products to complement the very strong broadcast, print and direct mail businesses that we have.

Is this where we will see more cooperation among the legacy media?

Sure. All of our different media platforms have their own digital platform and we have now built out a digital platform that will be able to serve all the media. It’s a common platform. We will be able to move content back and forth very easily. Basically, the view there is that the Web and mobile business are very similar in the digital space.

One of the things I should point out is that our goal is not to homogenize our media businesses. We think there are some very unique skill sets and important attributes to each of the platforms that we need to preserve and continue to nurture.

Where there are opportunities to have shared services, shared resources or shared best practices, we will do that. But it may not be in the best interest for a local television news program to have a 10-minute interview with a newspaper reporter on air. There may be some absolutely outstanding content and information that our newspaper folks have that should be shared with the television group, but it’s up to the television news director to determine how that’s presented on his newscast and his platform.