Morgan Murphy Media Selects TownNews To Grow Digital

Morgan Murphy Media, owner and operator of TV stations in several Texas, Wisconsin, Washington and Missouri markets, has chosen TownNews to power its future digital growth initiatives.

The company will move six of its properties — Channel3000 (Madison, Wis.), News8000 (La Crosse, Wis.), KXLY 4 News Now (Spokane, Wash.), YakTriNews (Yakima, Wash.), CrossRoadsToday (Victoria, Texas) and KOAM-TV (Joplin, Mo.) — to TownNews’ Rayos Platform, a WordPress-based content management system that’s customized to meet the unique needs of broadcast organizations.

“Using the Rayos Platform allows a broadcast group the size of Morgan Murphy Media to take advantage of the revenue, audience, and engagement services that TownNews provides, while at the same time giving us the flexibility and ease-of-use that WordPress is known for,” said Neal Oberg, vice president of digital media at Morgan Murphy Media.

The TownNews partnership will enable Morgan Murphy Media to leverage growth opportunities on over-the-top (OTT) platforms, including Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV.

“OTT continues to be a huge opportunity for local broadcasters and we feel that the past experience TownNews has had with local media in building niche audience, subscription, and new business models — through data layering and proven technology — positions Morgan Murphy Media perfectly to apply these same strategies and technologies to the local OTT space,” Oberg said. “Moreover, we are excited to work with a company that has the experience, technology, and people to win in the local OTT space.”

In addition to the Rayos Platform, Morgan Murphy will also make use of TownNews’ Field59 video management system, and its programmatic advertising and behavioral audience engagement programs.

“TownNews gives forward-thinking broadcasters like Morgan Murphy Media an unprecedented array of services to increase their revenue, efficiency, and audience engagement,” said Derek Gebler, vice president of broadcast and video at TownNews. “We’re thrilled that they’ve chosen to join our family, and we look forward to a long and productive relationship.”

“In looking for a new platform provider, we looked for a company that had past experience in the broadcast space, proven technology, was flexible to our needs, provided more than just technology, and was priced right for our market sizes. The TownNews team, and services like Rayos and Field59 VMS, checked all of these boxes,” Oberg said.