E.W. Scripps

The agreement covers 10 stations and runs through 2019. “Scripps is one of the largest owners of ABC affiliates, and we look forward to continuing our long-time collaboration with them,” said John Rouse, SVP of affiliate relations for ABC. Terms were not disclosed.

“The focus of the company is moving away from newspapers and moving toward serving our television properties more than we ever have,” says Scripps National Investigative Correspondent Mark Greenblatt. “We are constantly trying to be aware of how we can be a service to a lot of TV stations that have different types of news,” he says. “We are trying to operate like a mini-network investing in our affiliates.”

The E.W. Scripps Co. is deepening its ties to Cincinnati’s entrepreneurial community by hiring Twitter executive J.B. Kropp as vice president of digital strategy. Kropp led Twitter’s sales initiatives with Procter & Gamble for the last three years.

Brian Bracco is giving up his job as group VP of news at Hearst to become GM of Scripps’ ABC-Indie duopoly in Kansas City, KSHB-KMCI. In the corporate post, Bracco has been based in Kansas City and he earlier worked in the market as news director of Hearst’s KMBC.

The group owner’s execs say they are pleased with the ratings of the two home-grown shows it developed to replace syndication powerhouses Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Plus it gets to keep all the inventory in the new Let’s Ask America and The List.

African-American broadcast network Bounce TV is one year old this week. It is adding affiliates and advertisers for year two. Also, it is preparing to become a Nielsen-rated network before this year is out.

The station group schedules a third season for its America Now newsmagazine and is working with production company My Tupelo Entertainment to create more shows, including two weekday strips. “Our goal is to raise the bar again for our television stations,” says Raycom CEO Paul McTear. “We want to produce content that we know folks will like and come back to. We want to increase our ratings and advertising.”

The 134-year-old media company, led by CEO Rich Boehne (r), is moving away from newspapers to television with the recent purchase of the McGraw-Hill stations. With Brian Lawlor (l), television SVP, leading the charge, the near-term mission is to rebuild the stations’ cash flow margins. At the same time, Scripps has a long-range plan that focuses on investing in homegrown programming to reduce its reliance on syndicated fare; bulking up investigative news efforts; reorganizing and centralizing digital operations; and even sticking its toes in the social gaming pool. And it’s not ruling out buying more stations. “You’d definitely consider Scripps an investor going forward,” says Lawlor.

Ed Fernandez, Sam Rosenwasser and Steve Wasserman get additional group station oversight responsibilities while retaining their GM slots at WXYZ Detroit, WEWS Cleveland and WPTV West Palm Beach, respectively.

E.W. Scripps, Cox Media Group and Raycom Media are betting other stations will want to air its syndicated video clip show, in which five TV news vets riff and report on whatever the producers can find of interest on the Web and elsewhere. The mix of news and entertainment is produced as two back-to-back half-hours, giving stations the option of splitting up the episodes into different time slots or buying the show as a single half-hour.

With its purchase of McGraw-Hill’s stations in Denver, Indianapolis, San Diego and Bakersfield, Scripps is benefiting three constituencies: Itself, the viewers in those markets and the industry at large. Itself  and viewers because its plan to boost the new stations’ value stems from investing in news to raise ratings (and ad rates), giving viewers better news options; and the industry because the deal finally sets a price for stations that could get the station trading market rolling again. A lot of potential sellers have been sitting on the sidelines because they don’t know what their stations are worth. Now they do.

Last week’s $212 million purchase of the McGraw-Hill TV group will boost Scripps’ U.S. coverage to 13% and make it the country’s largest owner of ABC affiliates. And it also gives it five low-power Spanish-language stations. Brian Lawlor, Scripps’ SVP of the TV division, says his company made the deal because the new stations are “a really comfortable fit” in terms of culture, geography and size. He talks about the plans to make the most of this new opportunity, the company’s first major station purchase in 20 years.

With the addition of the Scripps outlets that reach 10% of TV homes, the lifestyle channel has boosted its coverage to more than 40%. The channel counts 16 other affiliates: eight ABC-owned, five Belo, two Lilly Broadcasting and one LKK Group.

A few words of caution for those enterprising station groups deciding to produce their own programming rather than buy syndicated fare. Think beyond just news; be merciless — if it doesn’t work, kill it and move on; and stay focused on building a strong, sustainable show for your own markets before even thinking about offering it to stations elsewhere.

Scripps-owned WPTV West Palm Beach, Fla., which has been producing news for Raycom’s WFLX, will now also be responsible for technical, promotional and online operations at the Fox affil.