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HOME OF THE GRAND OLE OPRY AND THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME, NASHville is steeped in rich music heritage. Music City USA, as it's called, brims with reminders of those roots and their influence. As important as the arts are to the city, so too are sports, particularly football and basketball. The National Football League's Tennessee Titans hold enormous sway in the market, as do local college sports. Their many die-hard fans voraciously gobble up local media coverage of their favorite players and teams.
The 30th-ranked Nashville television market, with 916,170 TV households, had experienced flat to low growth for several years until 2004 changed the trend, when spot TV grew about 9 percent overall. Despite having a robust advertising year, local broadcasters are still puzzled as to why Nashville is a top-30 market but ranks 38th in revenue, according to BIA Financial Network.
The tight ad marketplace necessitates that local broadcasters, already engaged in a daily struggle for viewers, find new revenue streams. Local TV stations have honed in on morning news as the next area for growth. Within the past eight months, all three of the major network affiliates have expanded their morning news to start at 4:30 a.m.
Meredith Corp.'s NBC affiliate WSMV-TV was the station that started the 4:30 a.m.-news craze, launching it last August coincident with the 2004 Summer Olympics carried by the network. Once viewed as an also-ran in the market, WSMV is making strides in the local news race, shedding its second- and sometimes third-place position in different news dayparts, says vp/general manager Steve Ramsey. In the February sweeps, WSMV was No. 1 at 5 and 6 p.m. in households and adults 25-54.
Also in August, husband-and-wife team Alan Frio and Terri Merriman started co-anchoring weekend morning news, which Ramsey credits with boosting weekend ratings. Merriman was initially hired to be the station's health reporter, then moved to the weekend slot alongside her husband. Other more recent changes to WSMVs weekend morning news include its expansion from one to two hours and its move from 11 a.m.-noon to 6-8 a.m.
WSMV is also the local home of Dr. Phil, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and, as of last fall, The Tony Danza Show. "From...