Local TV Ownership

Fox saw some significant developments at the local television level in 2005. At the end of the year, News Corp. owned 35 local stations in 26 markets across the U.S., reaching approximately 45% of the country. It owned both FOX and UPN affiliates in the top three media markets (New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) and other duopolies in six more of the top 20 markets.

In August 2005, Roger E. Ailes, chairman of the cable channel Fox News since its inception, was given the additional title of chairman of Fox Television Stations. His deputy at Fox News, Jack Abernathy, was earlier made CEO. Further, Shari Berg, a high-ranking Fox News executive, was promoted to a newly created job, senior vice president of news operations for Fox television stations. Berg also remained the head of news operations at the Fox News channel. In her dual role, she was expected to ensure collaboration and operational synergy between the cable news channel, the local news stations, and the larger Twentieth Century Television.

Those changes emphasize the focus News Corp. has on its U.S. news business, where it hopes to emulate the success of the cable channel in the local television market as well. Variety magazine noted that Ailes was grafting the Fox News cable channel’s style of operations onto the network of 35 local stations. More significantly, it was noted that “the centerpiece of Fox-under-Ailes will be expanded local news.”10 Abernathy was heard saying that he had plans to incorporate production values that are the hallmark of Fox News into the local news operations as well. He also hinted that talent deals could lead to the sharing of local and national personalities between the Fox News Channel and local stations. The first evidence of the policy emerged in January 2006, when two Fox News channel anchors shifted to the weekday local evening newscast on Fox-owned WNYW-TV, Channel 5. The station had been struggling to get an audience for its 6 p.m. newscast for a number of years, and the new team was designed to boost attention to the lineup.11

“We think the future of local stations is in news and information,” Abernathy explained. “We want to program the stations more like channels, which means having blocks of [compatible] programming that can supplement local news.” He pointed to the new syndicated Geraldo at Large with the Fox News Channel reporter Geraldo Rivera as a prime example of the kind of show that would provide strong lead-ins and bookends to local station news.12

The Fox News channel was also in the process of making itself into a network-style engine, and there were strong rumors that Fox News planned a daily national evening newscast (see Cable TV News Investment). Until now, the standard Fox model was network and local morning shows, similar to the big three networks, and a one-hour late newscast at 9 p.m. (central) and 10 p.m. (East and West Coast). The late Fox newscast did not compete with the 11 p.m. newscasts of the big three networks. That may change if Fox adopts the more traditional network model. Some press accounts speculated that Berg was put in a dual role in anticipation of her taking charge of the evening newscast. The idea of a Fox-branded national newscast has some appeal for local stations that have been looking at higher programming costs and the scarcity of new sitcoms to hit the syndication market.13

In December 2005, Fox launched its first local 11 p.m. newscast, in Tampa on WTVT, Channel 13. Local media noted that the show was stylistically very much like the cable channel, with slick production values and striking visuals. It is too early to assess the move, but it will bear watching to see how many local newscasts emerge and how audiences respond. The St. Petersburg Times TV critic Chase Squires differentiated the newscast from the main Fox cable channel’s as more “straightforward… even though it employs similar patriotic looking visuals.”14

Another area where Fox News may try to help their local stations gain share in their markets would be to improve its morning newscasts, which take on the more established “Today,” “Good Morning America” and “The Early Show.”

So while it is still early in the new Fox regime, one thing seems certain: given the impact Fox had on the cable scene, its interest in local stations is bound to change the landscape of local television news.15