WMTW-TV on the block

[Matthew Osborne]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 09:20:53 Chris Beckwith wrote:
> Harron is about to complete its exodus from
> broadcasting, with Hearst-Argyle
> being the most obvious buyer for the ABC affiliate. 
> The article also pegs the
> WMTW radio group sale price at about $12 million.
> http://business.mainetoday.com/news/031219wmtw.shtml
> 

Interesting, now I think I have a little more
background into why WMTW has always ranked third in
its newscasts and such.  This same Harron company used
to own WKTV (channel 2, an NBC affiliate) and the
local cable company (Harron Cable) in Utica NY.  I
seem to recall before WKTV was sold to Smith
Television, their news set was very substandard and
ancient looking.  They had the cheesiest small market
jingles and station imaging, and by watching it you
could tell it was a small market, fairly low budget
operation.  Now in Utica's case they were lucky - the
other network affiliate in town was a 1970 addition on
UHF, and the original owners of that (WUTR) were
probably one of the biggest cheapskates in
broadcasting history, so as bad as it was WKTV was
still miles ahead of WUTR (in quality as well as
signal coverage area).  If WMTW was run with any
similarity to the way WKTV was when Harron owned them,
I can totally see and undertsand why they have been
third place for as long as they have, because I would
think Portland actually had some good, decently
bankrolled competition unlike Utica.

    As much as I hate to say this, its probably
another argument supporting Dan Billings' reasoning
that having large corporate ownership of a media
outlet may actually be better than local mom and pop
ownership.  

                               Matt Osborne
                               Poughkeepsie, NY


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