Two Cleveland TV Stations Will Share News Video

 

CLEVELAND, OH (February 16, 2009) – WKYC-TV Channel 3 and WOIO-TV Channel 19 have reached an agreement to share video throughout the Cleveland area, a move they say will allow both stations to cover more stories.

While they may in fact be able to cover more stories by sharing, the bottom line is that the two rival stations – in the aftermath of many layoffs in their market – are looking for ways to save money during bad economic times.

Under the new agreement, videographers will cover stories that are pre-planned, such as news conferences, court hearings, groundbreaking ceremonies, and scheduled general news events, and then will "pool" their coverage.

The station's general managers said the move will allow both stations to shift their resources toward enterprise stories, and to be "more efficient without compromising the fine work being done by our reporters and anchors."

"Over the years, neither of these stations have really played well together in the sandbox," Kim Fatica said today. He's the former operations manager in the news departments at WOIO-TV and also earlier at WKYC-TV.

"This is an interesting dynamic for Cleveland, since the two stations represent news delivery at opposite ends of the spectrum. WKYC, the ratings leader for a number of years, presents a polished and traditional newscast. WOIO is the flashy, in-your-face, tabloid-syle newscast that's perceived by many as the ratings bottom-feeder at all but the noon and 11 p.m. time slots. WKYC excels when it comes to long-format storytelling, and WOIO is the breaking news king, while both stations have veteran photojournalists manning the cameras," Fatica said.

"But WOIO has never really been considered a contender in this market. Prior to its affiliation with WUAB, WUAB had the country's number one newscast at 10 p.m. and WOIO had no news."

The sharing agreement between WKYC and WOIO follows a national trend. Stations in the Philadelphia and Denver markets have reached similar agreements.

"There are often multiple videographers getting the same shots and the same sound from the exact same location," WKYC-TV's news director Rita Andolsen said in the announcement. "By sharing that basic footage, both stations will have more resources to gather unique content."

"This is a win-win situation," 19 Action News news director Dan Salamone said. "Viewers at both stations will get more stories, but each newsroom still keeps the editorial independence to write and report those stories in its own way."

WOIO-TV is owned by Raycom Media, and WKYC-TV is owned by Gannett.

WKYC-TV's general manager Brooke Spectorsky justified the decision to pool resources in a letter to the Cleveland chapter of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians union, according to a Plain Dealer story by Julie Washington.

"Now that we have the technical capability of sharing video, we can't justify sending a photographer to gather the exact same content from the exact same location that three other photographers have already shot," Spectorsky wrote. "We are wasting our photography resources on numerous generic stories every day."

About 30 union members have been laid off from Cleveland stations recently, including anchors, and the union is concerned that the new sharing agreement may lead to more layoffs, union chapter president Bill Wachenschwanz told the Plain Dealer. Spectorsky's letter wanted the unions support, but also said they felt they could move forward with the plan without it.

 

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