Raycom Media

The broadcaster, with its new Raycom Innovation Group, is using digital solutions to confront new challenges to its core business. Joe Fiveash, new corporate VP of digital, strategy and business development, and Pat LaPlatney, group VP, explain the Raycom’s moves in the digital space, including bolstering its digital sales force, making changes to its mobile platform and paying more attention to user data.

Weekly strips Fix It & Finish It and Flip My Food will launch later this year.

New Orleans Fox affiliate WVUE owner Tom Benson announced Wednesday that his Louisiana Media Co. reached a shared services agreement with Raycom Media that “allows the New Orleans-based television station to remain locally-owned, and expands its regional opportunities.”

Raycom Media has deployed LiveU bonded cellular products across its entire group, including LU70 backpacks and the LU-Smart app for smartphones.

Raycom Media and Auburn University’s school of communication and journalism today unveiled a partnership to train multimedia student journalists. Professors at the Alabama school and Raycom Media professionals will work […]

Local newspapers and broadcasters today are seeking content management systems that are faster and more complex than ever before. And while vendors are constantly developing new products to keep up with evolving demands, the industry is facing contraction. “There are just too many players, and nobody is really big enough to have any control,” says Internet Broadcasting’s Elmer Baldwin. “There are some that just aren’t going to survive.” Part two of a three-part special report. Read part one here

Raycom stations in 36 markets returned to Dish Network over the weekend after being dark since Aug. 1.

The group broadcaster is equipping 52 stations in 36 markets with the IP-capable cameras. The buy follows the station group’s earlier purchase of JVC cameras for studio use.

The head of Raycom’s ABC affil in Columbus, Ga., since 1995 is stepping down at the end of July.

The Raycom syndicated strip, now in its third season is looking to expand beyond Raycom’s 47 stations in 36 markets.

The deal adds five television markets, bringing the station group’s Rentrak markets to 23. The new additions are KCBD (NBC) Lubbock, Texas; KFVS (CBS) Paducah, Ky.-Cape-Girardeau, Mo.; KSLA (CBS) Shreveport, Miss.; WECT (NBC) and WSFX (Fox) Wilmington, N.C.; and WDBD (Fox) Jackson, Miss.

The station group adopts it as its nonlinear editing system of choice. Raycom CTO David Folsom: “The fact that we have the same editing ability in all of our stations and our journalists’ laptops makes our workflows much more efficient.”

The Raycom NBC affiliate in Montgomery, Ala., wanted to be close to the action in the state capital so it built a new studio that has the Capitol building as a backdrop to its newscasts. To get multiple HD signals back to the station three miles away, it turned to a powerful IP microwave system.

Raycom Media has selected Matrix CRM from Matrix Solutions for its enterprise account management and sales analytics solution.  Raycom installed the Matrix product across 48 television stations, granting more than […]

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 broadcaster hopes to speed media convergence by fast-tracking the DTV signal encoding and processing platform at 43 stations.

Raycom Media is upgrading its Volicon Observer digital video monitoring and logging system deployment so that all 48 of the group’s stations can use the Observer not only for monitoring, […]

Raycom Media, owner of the Fox affiliate in Panama City, Fla., laid off eight workers last month in a downsizing move. Six were full-timers and two were part-time employees.

The station group promotes Lee Coble from its Tucson stations to oversee all corporate marketing.

The sign is already there: “Toledo News Now.” That should become official late today with the expected finalized agreement between American Spirit Media, the new owner of WUPW, and Raycom Media, owners and operators of WTOL. Under terms of the deal, WTOL will handle WUPW’s news programming.

CBS and Raycom Media’s ABC affiliate WLOX Biloxi, Miss., signed an affiliation agreement Wednesday to carry the network on a subchannel, but no date was set for the network’s debut. In addition to over-the-air coverage, WLOX-CBS will also be avaiable on cable and satellite.

U.S. Army Capt. Frank Razzano Jr. is spending a year as an intern in the news department of Raycom’s Savannah, Ga., CBS affiliate. He’s following a reporter and a photographer as they pursue stories, sits in on news meetings and studies the station’s marketing and promotion efforts. It’s all to learn techniques and skills that will help him do his Army job of convincing foreign populations to support the work of U.S. forces in their countries.

America Now, the first-run syndicated daily newsmagazine show co-hosted by Leeza Gibbons and Bill Rancic from ITV Studios America and Raycom Media, has been renewed for a third season, it […]

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.

Raycom Media Inc. announced today that it has acquired the assets of New York-based Tupelo-Honey Productions (THP), including 50% of My Tupelo Entertainment. The acquisition adds to the Raycom Media […]

As he has in at least three other markets, Henson will enter into a shared services agreement with Raycom Media so that Raycom can run Toledo, Ohio, Fox affiliate WUPW in tandem with its CBS affil WTOL.

In Part I of TVNewsCheck‘s three-part special report on audience measurement, Media Ratings Council Chairman and Raycom Media chief researcher Billy McDowell discusses the state of local TV ratings and what’s being done to make them better. He also gives no ground in the battle over what measure should be used in local TV: live-plus-same-day is the only way to go.

The Media Bureau says that the 2009 deal that resulted in Raycom running three stations in Honolulu, including the NBC and CBS affiliates, did not violate the law or commission precedent as a local opposition group had contended. However, the bureau is concerned about such arrangements and said it would look into them in the context of its ongoing review of the broadcast ownership rules. It also fined MCG Capital, Raycom’s partner in the deal, $10,000 for violating public file rules.

A year and a half ago, KMSB Tucson, Ariz., was making ambitious plans to hire a dozen news staffers to launch a new morning news and information show. Station owner Belo Corp. never green-lighted the project, citing budget concerns. Now, under a shared services agreement, the show is going to happen, but with Raycom’s KOLD doing the work.

The cable trade association says consumers typically pay higher retransmission consent fees while receiving diminished local news services under such deals.

On Tuesday, Belo Corp. announced a shared services deal for its Tucson, Ariz., duopoly of KMSB (Fox) and KTTU (MNT) that will put operations of the two stations in the hands of  Raycom Media’s KOLD (CBS). The only Tucson employees who will remain with Belo are those in sales. All other Belo jobs will be eliminated.

Raycom is rolling out high-def newscasts in all its small and mid-size market stations, and expects to have all but five on air in HD by the end of the year. A good example of just how Raycom goes from SD to HD is WAFF, the NBC affiliate in Huntsville-Decatur-Florence, Ala. Its overhaul featured a new studio, control room, edit bays and a raft of gear including 23 Sony camcorders, a Snell Kahuna production switcher and three Hitachi studio cameras.

The FCC has granted Raycom Media permission to move ahead with its $18-million acquisition of WFXG Augusta, Ga. (DMA 114), a Fox affiliate it has been managing under a local marketing agreement since 2003. Raycom doesn’t own or operate any other stations in the market.

Leeza Gibbons is returning to daily first-run syndication as co-host of America Now, the upcoming daily news program from Raycom Media and ITV Studios America that’s set to launch Sept. 12.

The Montgomery, Ala.-based station group is paying $18 million to purchase Fox affiliate WFXG Augusta, Ga., which it has been operating under an LMA since 2003.

The group owner is installing Chyron’s graphics workflow across its 31 news-producing stations.

The new multicast channel targeted to African Americans gets its first big carriage deal. Starting this fall, when the network launches, Raycom will carry it in 26 markets covering 10% of U.S. TV home and nearly 19% of African-American TV homes.

The LMA/option between Raycom and a subsidiary of MCG Capital that has created a three-TV station cluster in Honolulu is under formal assault by Media Council Hawaii. Rules of engagement just released by the FCC show that many of the pertinent facts will be kept under wraps.