This post was originally published on this site
Small-market TV broadcasting is a tough racket these days and nobody knows that better than the men and women charged with managing stations in the 50-plus markets. To make a living — to stay employed, in some cases — they must make the numbers handed down from their group owners, quarter after quarter after quarter. And the numbers are always a stretch.
Fair enough. That’s business.
But the big groups that own most of the stations have a responsibility, too. And, according to a survey of small-market managers, they are shirking it. The general managers and news directors say their group bosses have failed to provide a comprehensive and practical strategy for reaching and monetizing millennials (and younger people) on their preferred digital turf as well as offering substantial resources to implement it.
The groups’ failures have contributed to stations’ downward spiral marked not only by the inability to exploit fully the burgeoning digital market, but also by greater difficulty in recruiting qualified young staffers with an innate understanding of digital media.
The qualitative survey of the general managers and news directors in 14 small-market stations in the Mid-Atlantic states is at the heart of a newly minted Liberty University doctoral dissertation by Chris Leister.
I’ve known Chris since our days at Duquesne University, and I have followed his successful 35-year career as a national sales manager, general manager and, in the last years before retirement, as a sales executive and minority partner at Bray Cary’s West Virginia Media Holdings. The survey questions and their