Re: WKNE/ WKVT Sold to Saga?

["Mark Watson" <markwats@mediaone.net>]

  Steve Ordinetz wrote:

> Back in the 80s, new owners of WMUR-TV decided to market themselves as a
> regional station, with heavier northern Mass. news coverage somewhat at
the
> expense of N.H.  The idea bombed badly, they underestimated the extreme
> awareness viewers had of which side of the border they lived on.  Mass.
> people weren't interested in watching a N.H. tv station, and N.H. people
> didn't care what was going on in Lowell.

    That was 1982 when WMUR tried to go after the Lowell/Lawrence area as
well as Southern New Hampshire. They advertised extensively in the local
papers, and they even had ads on the outside of the Lowell Regional Transit
buses as well. They did have decent news coverage of the Bay State side of
the Merrimack Valley. But it didn't fly and they quietly did away with
Lowell area coverage and the newspaper and bus ads disappeared.

   BTW, WNDS (Channel 50) does some news coverage of the Lowell/Lawrence
area on their newscasts. They do have ads in the Lowell Sun from time to
time as well.

Mark Watson