Can a radio station website save local news?
Saga Communications, which owns radio stations in Charlottesville and across the country, is betting on local news websites,
When Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr. was sentenced in the evening on Friday, November 21 for killing three UVA students and wounding two others in 2022, the Washington Post didn’t turn to our 133-year old daily newspaper, our 36-year old local weekly, or our 20-year old non-profit news website — they turned to a news feed that was launched on a local radio station’s website only a year ago.
Perry’s sister said the killing “shattered” their lives. “Accountability matters,” D’Shandra Perry said, according to Cville Right Now. “My brother’s life matters.”
Oh, USAToday, ESPN, and the Virginian-Pilot also used Cville Right Now for coverage of the sentencing.
Cville Right Now editor Mike Barber admits that his experience writing for the Post, ESPN, and the Virginian-Pilot might have helped, and that paywalled papers like the Post and Times may prefer referring readers to “free sites” if they can find ones that are considered credible, but he also credits their approach.
“We had quality daily coverage of the hearings,” he says, “ so there was a dependability that hopefully Post editors took note of.”
Of course, the Daily Progress had excellent same-day coverage of the sentencing, and both 29News and CBS19 covered the story, but obstacles like paywalls and websites cluttered with annoying pop-ups, poor layouts, and an emphasis on national news tends to isolate the coverage. Non-profit news website Charlottesville Tomorrow didn’t even include the sentencing in their Week in Review email, and C-VILLE Weekly didn’t publish a story until the following week.
“I’d like to think people are noticing our commitment to accuracy and timeliness and our hyper-local focus,” says Barber. “Our primary competition on that front is the Daily Progress, and they are behind a paywall. I can tell you, in the six months I’ve been here, we’ve seen our online readership soar and, again, I hope it’s those qualities I mentioned that are bringing readers to us.”
Saga Communications, which owns Cville Right Now, seems pretty excited, too. Last year, the publicly traded media company, which owns local radio stations in 28 markets across the country, including the Charlottesville Media Group collection of radio stations (1070 WINA, 106.1 The Corner, Z95.1, 97.5 3WV, Fox Sports 102.9 FM, C-Ville Country), decided to launch branded local news websites in its markets. Cville Right Now, Rocktown Now, 828News Now, Crawford County Now, Clarksville Now, etc., all share the same website design and follow the same format.
Many of those markets already have news/talk radio channels like WINA here in Charlottesville, which offers hours of news programming every day. So the news websites capitalize on that content and then add their own coverage. Its makes a lot of sense.
In May this year, Saga Communications Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer Sam Bush said the company’s revenue from its online news initiative “almost doubled from $285,000 in the first quarter of 2024 to $562,000 for the first quarter this year.”
Due to an industry-wide settlement this August with ASCAP and BMI over licensing fees for the music that radio stations play, which include retroactive payments, Saga Communications and others took a serious financial hit and will see licensing from rates from BMI go from 1.7% of a station’s revenue to 2.20% starting next year. Still, the news website idea was a bright spot.
“While still in its infancy from a total dollar standpoint,” said Bush during a November earnings call, “ our online news initiative revenue, which rolls up into our interactive numbers, grew by 26% for the quarter and 51% for the 6-month period compared to 2024.”
Still, most media organizations are white-knuckling it one day at a time, and based on the immediate past, the future can look pretty grim.
For example, quarterly corporate financial reports always try to put a positive spin on things, and some news sources were quick to tout the subscription growth recently reported by Lee Enterprises, but the company that owns the Daily Progress and over 70 other daily and weekly newspapers across the country had a rough year.
Lee Enterprises reported a net loss of $36 million this year, including $4 million for restoration services after a cyber attack/ransom in February by Russian hackers, which prevented them from printing newspapers for a time and compromised the personal information of approximately 40,000 people. As a result, the company has faced a number of lawsuits and investigations. In July, Lee agreed to pay $9.5 million to subscribers alleging privacy violations, and two other similar lawsuits are in the works.
Meanwhile, the company continues to carry $455 million in debt under a loan agreement with Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway Media Group, which transferred its portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers to Lee in 2020. It’s an oddly structured loan agreement, as it has a 25-year term, requires no principal payments, and has an interest rate of only 9 percent. In fact, during the cyber attack, BH Media was okay with Lee paying nothing for three months.
As previously reported, C-VILLE Weekly has turned to asking for donations, and Charlottesville Tomorrow depends so heavily on grants and major gifts (reported revenue in 2023 was $1 million, but only $47,000 of that came from small gifts and subscribers) that they’d have a hard time existing without them. Gray Television, which owns 29News, announced last month that third quarter revenues were down 21 percent from the same quarter last year. And as the LA Times reported this year, the annual National Assn. of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas was a grim affair, as streaming video now accounts for 43.5 percent of all TV viewing.
During an August earnings call, the CEO of Saga Communications, while remaining hopeful about the company’s news website initiative and general health, nonetheless sounded like a field general trying to brace his troops for a difficult battle.
“I heard a quote that I think is appropriate, not only for Saga, but for everyone listening,” said CEO Chris Forgey. “ It says, “those forged by the fire of adversity become living symbols of unbreakable will.”
Of course, if you’re a soldier, and you hear that, there’s a good chance you’re thinking you might not be coming home.