Cox Enterprises late last year knocked down the management walls among its legacy media properties.

Rather than continue operating Cox Television, Cox Radio and Cox Newspapers as separate businesses, the family-owned multimedia company combined them under the Cox Media Group banner and put Sandy Schwartz, a former newspaperman and business development executive, in charge.

In Schwartz's new order, unveiled in a series of press releases over the summer, Executive Vice Presidents Doug Franklin and Bob Neil report to Schwartz and have responsibility for the newspapers and most of the radio stations, respectively.

Franklin and Neil will also oversee some of Cox's 15 TV stations as part of a plan to create operational efficiencies and regional cross-media selling opportunities by putting TV, radio and newspapers under common management in some places.

Niel's radio-laden portfolio includes WPXI Pittsburgh and nearby stations in Johnstown, Pa., and Steubenville, Ohio. Franklin's newspaper lineup gets WHIO Dayton, Ohio, to go along with the Dayton Daily News and the radio stations in the market.

Two other Schwartz reports split the rest of the TV stations.

Group VP Jay O'Connor oversees the TV stations in San Francisco; Seattle; El Paso, Texas; and Reno, Nev., as well as the radio stations in Hawaii.

And Bill Hoffman continues to run the Cox flagship, WSB Atlanta, as VP and general manager, while advising Swartz on TV matters and coordinating the buying of syndicated programming for all the stations. He also oversees the TV news bureau in Washington.

Doling out the TV stations among several executives also solves the management riddle that Cox was presented with the retirement of its top two TV executives. Andy Fisher, who was in charge of all the stations as president of Cox Television, left at the end of last year and his chief lieutenant, Bruce Baker, followed him out the door several months later.

Two other operational executives report to Schwartz: Marc Morgan, senior vice president and chief revenue officer, whose duties include developing news sales opportunities and sales training, and Jim Monahan, president of Cox Reps (TeleRep, HRP, MMT and Cox Cross Media).

Sterling Davis, the vice president of technical operations, reports to Neil and Franklin with a dotted line to Schwartz.

Although Cox was founded as a newspaper publisher and prospered as a pioneering broadcaster (radio in 1934 and TV in 1948), the legacy media that Schwartz now commands accounts for just 10-15 percent of the parent company's $15 billion in annual revenue. Cox Cable Communications, the nation's third-largest cable operator, is now the company's big driver.

But despite the diminished role and the struggle of the legacy media, the company remains committed to them, Schwartz says in this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell. He also discusses the thinking behind the restructuring, his hope that cost cutting is in the past and his conservative revenue forecast for TV in 2010.

An edited transcript:

Can you explain what you hope to achieve through the reorganization?

We really believe that we can obtain not only economies of scale, but also a lot of back-shop savings. We also have executives in Cox who have worked across radio, television and newspaper and have a lot to offer all across our landscape. Why work in silos and have TV people only talk to TV people when we can take these bright leaders who have done great things and spread the talent around.

Another of the by-products, which I just think is phenomenal, is the opportunities for people. If you were a TV executive producer for news, your upward mobility was pretty much was within TV. This is really going to give you a chance to see if you fit across other media. Some people can do that, can make that transition. We think we have a lot of good people who have a lot to offer.

Another reason is research. Bob Neal is simply a brilliant researcher and he now has Roxann Miller as the head of research. We are going to be able to take their expertise, combine it with the phenomenal research that Andy [Fisher] and Bruce [Baker] did [for the old TV group] and spread that across a lot of other properties.

On the digital side, we've got five different platforms that we're running all our media businesses on. Our goal is to get it all onto one platform and be able to sell across markets where it makes sense and be able to do the regional deals. We've put digital under one person, Gregg Lindahl, who is our VP of digital. He reports to [Executive Vice President] Doug Franklin. That is going to give us the opportunity to spend a lot less time and money in the back shop and focus on the customer.

So the goal is to have | More …