E.W. Scripps Co.

Chip Mahaney, the station group’s former regional general manager for the digital division, will hire news directors, assistant news directors and executive producers across the company’s news-producing stations.

In addition to reporting for the Denver ABC affiliate, Tony Kovaleski will also train investigative journalists for Scripps stations across the country.

The drop to $157 million is a result of flat local advertising and lower national and political dollars and higher expenses that couldn’t be offset by a 52% spike in retrans revenue.

Mark Binda is named senior director of programming for the Scripps television station group, charged with working with station managers to develop original programming and explore syndication deals.

A new agreement covers exclusive rights to fact-checking resources for broadcast/digital coverage in Ohio, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona.

Cater Lee, the broadcast group’s senior director of TV program development for the Scripps broadcast division from 2011 to 2014, is returning. Scripps SVP of Broadcasting Brian Lawlor says: “She has a tremendous instinct for what makes a successful show; has the connections to get the right people in the right spots; and has broad experience in taking a show from its early development concepts all the way to national syndication.”

The company execs say they see many opportunities, including buying stations after the auction when others are unsatisfied with the prices offered for spectrum. Scripps is also bullish on the opportunities that ATSC 3.0 can bring.

The gain to $167 million is aided by higher retransmission revenue and offset somewhat by an increase in network compensation tied to the renegotiation of the ABC affiliation agreements for 10 stations.

The E.W. Scripps Co. entered the growing podcast space with its acquisition of Midroll Media on Wednesday, and the company says it was drawn by the form’s high CPMs and “rabid” audiences. NetNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp looks at the growing monetizing opportunities Scripps sees in podcasts and the potential integrations it’s planning with its television and radio stations.

The E.W. Scripps Co. is getting into the podcast business via its acquisition of Midroll Media, an L.A.-based company that creates original podcasts and operates a revenue-generating network for more than 200 shows. Terms of the deal were not disclosed

New owner Scripps signs a three-year renewal for its Nashville CBS outlet.

The deal covers 18 markets, makes multicast networks Grit available in 93 million households, Escape in 70 million and Laff in 64 million.

In the last quarter before completion of the Journal merger, results were boosted by retrans and Super Bowl advertising.

In the wake of the Journal merger, the company promotes Debbie Turner, Ed Fernandez and Steve Wasserman and names their successor GMs in Nashville, Detroit and West Palm Beach. The new GMs are Lyn Plantinga (WTVF), Mike Murri (WXYZ-WMYD) and Lloyd Bucher (WPTV).

Scripps and Journal simultaneously spun off and merged their newspaper operations to form Journal Media Group and immediately thereafter merged their broadcast operations, making Scripps one of the nation’s largest independent TV station owners. 

Empower MediaMarketing, an independent media agency, has announced plans to allow advertisers to buy local broadcast TV inventory via programmatic channels. Empower has partnered with the E.W. Scripps Co. and invested in Savveo, an ad tech startup focused on local media, to put the pipes in place. Local programmatic ad inventory from Scripps-owned TV stations is expected to be available to Empower clients by the second quarter of 2015.

Upon closing of the transactions, Scripps and Journal will merge their broadcast operations, creating an expanded Scripps, while simultaneously spinning off and merging their newspaper operations to form a new publicly traded company called Journal Media Group.

By mid-April, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel likely will be part of a new Milwaukee-based newspaper company — and Milwaukee broadcast icons WTMJ-AM-TV likely will be run from a headquarters in Cincinnati. That is the timetable expected to be set in motion assuming shareholders from Journal Communications and E.W. Scripps approve a merger of the two companies’ broadcast units and a spinoff of the newspaper group. If that happens, both companies will hold special meetings scheduled for March 11 in Milwaukee for Journal shareholders and in Cincinnati for Scripps shareholders.

Most local media companies are keeping mum about their plans for the forthcoming Apple Watch, but E.W. Scripps and Gannett say they’re ready with apps to follow right behind its March launch. USA Today will display its five top stories plus breaking news on its app, and Scripps’ apps are likely to feature weather, traffic, push notifications and geolocation.

The group brings in former WWL New Orleans news director Bill Siegel to fill the new position in advance of its closing on the Journal stations.

The two companies are merging their broadcast operations under the E.W. Scripps Co. name while spinning off their newspaper interests into a new company, Jounal Media Group.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s landslide victory last week probably cost E.W. Scripps Co. $10 million in revenue this year from its WEWS Cleveland and WCPO Cincinnati.

Rich Boehne, the company’s chairman, president and CEO, is now on board through 2016, with options for year-to-year renewals after that. He’s been with Scripps for 30 years.

The increase to $121 million was fueled by higher local, political and digital revenue as well as a 46% rise in retrans money.

The E.W. Scripps Co. has acquired WeatherSphere, a provider of weather apps. WeatherSphere, which now has eight iPhone apps and two for Android, including NOAA High-Def Radar, RadarCast, NOAA Snow Forecast and WeatherAlerts, will be used to leverage enhanced radar technology into Scripps’ existing Storm Shield, a paid national weather app geared at providing emergency alerts.

A former employee of Clevealnd ABC affiliate WEWS has sued the station’s parent company, E.W. Scripps, saying an engineer had placed a hidden camera in the men’s bathroom this summer.

The Scripps Cincinnati station is betting big that people will pay for in-depth local content with value-added member benefits.

Cameryn Beck, KTVK Phoenix news director, will join the station group as a senior director of news strategy, working with Lana Durban.

E.W. Scripps CEO Rich Boehne believes in the staying power of the company’s television stations. “Television is one of the greatest businesses that God ever created,” he said. “I mean, it’s just a fabulous business.”

The E.W. Scripps ABC affiliate WFTS Tampa, Fla. (DMA 14), is redefining its afternoon news on Sept. 8 with the premiere of The Now Tampa Bay at 4 p.m. The Now Tampa Bay is an original Scripps program that aims to focus “on issues of most interest to news consumers in the Tampa Bay area […]

Under the leadership of CEO Rich Boehne and Digital SVP Adam Symson, the E.W. Scripps Co. is engaged in an earnest effort at multifront innovation to do a rare thing in local media — proactively getting in front of its destiny. Here are some lessons that other media companies can learn from.

The E.W. Scripps Co. has been hiring digital-only reps at a rate of about 75 a year, sellers who may not bring with them a book of business but must be uniquely hungry and able to adopt a longer-term sales approach with SMB clients. It is also offering a widening suite of digital marketing services with mobile and video taking on growing importance among its product offerings. This is the sixth in a series of Digital Deep Dive special reports on Scripps.

E.W. Scripps CEO Rich Boehne says he’s “never seen real R&D units work,” so he created the Digital Solutions Group, a unit directly tasked with executing Boehne’s vision of aggressively developing new business lines in this increasingly digital time. The five-person team works side by side with the company’s corporate leaders. This is the fourth in a series of Digital Deep Dive special reports on Scripps.

At the E. W. Scripps’ Co., there surfaces a picture of two men determined to confront the digital revolution head on, getting out in front of competitors with aggressive experimentation and investing in new products and distributed risk. The zeal and urgency for change generated by Rich Boehne and Adam Symson has pervaded and emboldened Scripps, whose entrepreneurial culture is manifesting on multiple digital fronts. This is the second in a series of Digital Deep Dive special reports on Scripps.

The WCPO Cincinnati experiment, whose boldness derives from an unprecedented ask of its users, ultimately has The E. W. Scripps Co. re-examining its entire approach to TV news content and cross digital/broadcast news production. Scripps is reframing its marketing message to consumers, and, in the process, re-examining how to give value to consumers beyond a content play, using the consumer data it’s now more closely collecting and parsing to heighten user affinity and personalization. The first in a series looking at digital innovation across Scripps.

The increase to $116 million was fueled by higher local, political and digital revenue as well as a 21% rise in retrans money.

The Scripps game show adds non-Scripps stations prior to its third season launch in September. Coverage rises to 70% with a new cable run on GSN factored in.

That’s how Rich Boehne, Scripps president-CEO, described the agreement that will combine the two companies’ broadcast operations and spin off the newspapers, creating two companies. Investors and analysts were bullish too, with both companies’ stock up by double digits today. With the deal, Scripps becomes the fifth largest independent station group in terms of reach, covering 22 million U.S. television households — roughly 18 % —  with 34 stations in 24 markets, including 14 in top 50 DMAs.