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For the better part of the 1990s, Greenville, S.C., and its neighboring cities-Spartanburg to the east, Anderson to the south and Asheville, N.C., to the north-have enjoyed solid economic growth. The central Carolinas corridor defined by the four communities has attracted a list of multinational businesses that reads like a United Nations roster. In addition to the celebrated BMW plant built six years ago on the Greenville-- Spartanburg border, there are literally dozens of European and Japanese manufacturers with operations in the area. Hitachi owns an electronics plant three miles outside of Greenville, while Austrian automotive fabrics manufacturer Eybl Cartex is 20 miles from downtown. Spartanburg is home to a major marketer of snack crackers, Canada-based Dare Foods.
Yet even as the global economy has come to this mountainous market, its communities are in no rush to join it. Despite the region's dramatic upswing (Greenville is the fastestgrowing city in South Carolina) and the rapid acculturation of the area from insular to diverse cosmopolitan, the four cities have largely remained true to their small-town roots.
Local loyalties play a major role in shaping the economics of local television in Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson-Asheville, the U.S.' 35th-largest TV market. While all local TV stations' signals are carried in all four communities, Sinclair Broadcasting-- owned ABC affiliate WLOS dominates the news scene in its home base of Asheville. Likewise, Greenville-headquartered NBC affiliate WYFF, owned by Hearst-Argyle Broadcasting, and Spartan Communications' CBS affiliate WSPA in Spartanburg have the most popular newscasts among viewers in their hometowns.
For media buyers, the strength of each outlet in its community creates challenges. "You almost have to buy each station-they are still very much hometown newses," says Jack Welch, media strategist at ad agency Brains on Fire in Greenville. "All the stations have to play the game. No matter how hard they try to not [identify themselves with] their individual market, people in those cities view them that way."
"You do have geographic biases in viewing," adds David McAtee, general manager of WYFF.
The real ratings contest, then, is for the viewers who live outside the market's four major cities. The geographically large Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson-Asheville market includes 10 counties in South Carolina and 14 in North Carolina.
Greenville-based WYFF tailors its news programming to the South...