WCPO’s Online Report Card

WCPO.com takes a backseat in traffic to Cincinnati.com, the website for the Gannett-owned daily Cincinnati Enquirer. Before WCPO’s paywall, from July to December 2013, Cincinnati.com led the market with 1,107,000 average monthly unique visitors (UVs), while WCPO.com followed with 823,000 UVs. WLWT.com was behind with 736,000, Raycom Media’s Fox19.com garnered 578,000 and WKRC’s site, Local12.com, had 198,000.

WCPO.com post-paywall period, January to May 2014

WCPO.com slipped to third in the market according to comScore, though its overall number of UVs increased.

• Cincinnati.com: 1,258,000 UVs
• WLWT.com: 1,217,000
• WCPO.com: 1,091,000
• Local12.com: 530,000
• Fox19.com: 396,000

Interestingly, WCPO.com’s traffic saw 1.5 million UVs in January after it had announced its paywall and was at the height of its content ramp-up leading up to it.

This story originally appeared in TVNewsCheck’s Executive Outlook, a quarterly print publication devoted to the future of broadcasting. Subscribe here.