Philly TV Stations Scramble To Keep Up

Learning to cope with new financial and technological picture

And then there was one.

6ABC is now the only Philadelphia TV station that has its own helicopter - not the big story in the grand scheme of local television, even if the station does air a promo every five minutes.

The big story is bigger, according Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Inquirer TV critic. The city's major TV stations are doing all sorts of things to boost revenue and keep up with technology: joining forces, rebooting websites, reformatting news shows, branching into new time slots, creating new shows, and, in one instance, starting a new local channel.

It's the best-of-times, the worst-of-times as local TV climbs out of the economic morass of 2009. The long-term trend is down, but revenue increased last year, even as ratings continued to drop.

Prying financials from local stations is like trying to get an American Idol contestant to sing softly, but figures from Borrell & Associates, a leading media-research firm, show advertising revenue from local TV operations reversing a years-long slide, up 2 percent in 2010, but down more than one-third since 2006.

Nielsen Co. figures show average full-day viewership among the six largest Philadelphia stations dropped 8.3 percent between 2009 and 2010 in the November "sweeps" period, when ratings in many markets are used to set advertising rates. It's hard to get a true picture from year-to-year sweeps comparisons, but over the last four years, viewer numbers have dived 17 percent.

As the general economy rebounds, local businesses are seeking to advertise themselves out of the recession. Auto dealers, a TV staple that virtually vanished from the screen at the height of the downturn, are back strong.

Not only will TV get more advertisers, executives believe, it will be able to raise rates despite lower ratings. That is because television, unlike print or digital media, has a finite inventory of ad space; there are only 24 hours in a day.

"It's basically supply-and-demand forces at work," said Bernie Shimkus, vice president of research for Harmelin Media, the Philadelphia market's biggest media buyer, in an e-mail. "Most advertisers . . . are still interested in reaching the largest audience, as quickly as possible. Despite declines in ratings, local broadcast channels still provide the best opportunity to achieve that goal."

Borrell Associates, which researches advertising data across all platforms, has found that Philadelphia stations lost $327 million, about one-third, in annual revenue from their TV operations over the last four years. Newspapers in the region sustained a drop of more than 40 percent, about $700 million.

But Borrell found regional online advertising nearly doubling in the same period, from $787 million to $1.5 billion, something that benefited all the traditional media that have started websites.

Read more here.