CBS O&Os Make Local All-Media Push

The nation's second-largest TV station group with $1.6 billion in 2008 revenue (according to BIAfn), CBS Television Stations underwent a major front-office shakeup last month.

Tom Kane, the longtime head of the group, was bounced and Peter Dunn, the general manager of flagship WCBS New York, was installed in his place.

In the new order, Dunn will continue to manage WCBS and will work closely with Anton Guitano, newly appointed as COO of CBS Local Media. In this new role, Guitano reports to Dunn and to Dan Mason, president of CBS Radio.

But, significantly, Guitano will also report to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves. That will give him the muscle he needs to get TV and radio working together in a common local media strategy.

Dunn and Guitano are veteran broadcasters and CBS executives.

Prior to running WCBS, Dunn was president of sales for the group and spot sales operations for the group. He also served a stint as GM of CBS's stations in Philadelphia, KYW and WPSG.

Guitano has been with CBS for 31 years, most recently as CFO and senior executive vice president, operations, for CBS Radio. Before that, he was executive vice president of operators for the TV group.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, Dunn and Guitano explain the local cross-platform strategy, which involves merging the local news-and-information Web sites of the TV and radio stations and going head-to-head with local newspaper sites.

An edited transcript:

Peter heads the TV stations and Dan Mason heads the radio stations. I get that. What exactly is Anton's role in all this?

Guitano: First of all, it's taking TV and radio, the two local businesses that we're going to be overseeing, and trying to figure out how we're going to get the best out of both by getting them to work together.

I have worked a long time in TV and the last two years in radio. One of the things I've learned is TV stations do certain things very, very well and other things not so well. Likewise, radio stations have certain things that they do very well that TV doesn't do so well. So it's trying to bring the best of both together so that we can maximize our local assets.

One of the things that we just did was look at our major markets and say what is our reach when you put our TV stations, radio stations and our Web assets together.

It's not going to be a cookie-cutter approach to how we implement this across our markets. Peter, Dan Mason and I will be traveling to all the markets starting with the big ones and sitting down with the general managers and department heads. We want to figure out what makes the most sense in each market. We will be giving them suggestions and ideas that have come up in other markets, but we're not going to force them on people. We're going to be more like coaches.

Dunn: We have done a lot of this in the past -- sharing content and cross-promotion with radio and television. But this time around, having it come from the top with Leslie on board, it's different. Everybody thinks it's a great idea. We're going about it in a way that we should have done a while ago because there have been many missed opportunities. Now that we're all on the same page, it's actually going to work a lot better.

What kinds of things are you talking about?

Guitano: For example, when we look at political -- 2010 is going to be a big political year -- TV stations have done really, really well over the years, whereas radio has not done so well. So we're hoping to be able to go into these political agencies and show them the benefits of buying TV and radio together and the efficiencies that that will bring to bear.

Radio has done a very good job of selling digital, whereas TV may not have done quite as well. So we're going to try to get some of our radio people to teach the TV people how to sell local digital better.

So are we going to see a lot of cross-platform selling?

Dunn: When you combine all of our assets together, the client will actually get a lot more for his money at the end of the day. So that's one thing I'm really looking forward to because, as Anton said, we have a lot of strength in TV and radio and digital and we have got to combine those strengths a lot more than we have had in the past.

Guitano: In New York, for example, if you look at just adults 18-plus, across all three platforms, we reach, just in basic coverage, more than 80 percent of that total audience. If you then look at households that are making $100,000 or more, we're almost at 90 percent. There's efficiency there. We can go into an advertiser and say, look at what you can do with one-stop shopping.