Success to the 9

In its five years, Bay News 9 has exceeded its expectations for ratings, revenue and influence. The response from the local cable news channel's rivals: What influence?

By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 30, 2002

[Times photo: Kathleen Cabble] Elliott Wiser is the general manager of Bay News 9, the area’s 24-hour local news channel. Wiser says the channel has developed to a point he originally thought would take eight to 10 years to reach.

PINELLAS PARK -- He knows it may sound a little overconfident, but Bay News 9 general manager Elliott Wiser remembers the moment he knew that his vision for a 24-hour, hyperlocal cable news channel would make a mark on the Tampa Bay area TV news scene.

It was long before Time Warner sunk $5-million into building a state-of-the-art Pinellas Park studio with robotic cameras and stories stored on computerized video servers. It came before the convergence deals allowing the channel to share reporting resources with three area newspapers and several radio stations.

And it came before the channel offered the area's first Spanish-language local cable news channel, Bay News 9 en espanol.

Wiser was in a hotel room in May 1997, preparing to interview prospective staffers for a cable news channel that, at that moment, existed mostly in his head.

"It was one of my first nights here, and it rained like bejeebers," Wiser said. "I flipped on the TV and saw no crawls (scrolling lines of text at the bottom of the screen) and no cut-in (reports). I looked at everyone's 5 p.m. news, and the storm wasn't even the lead story. That's when I knew there was a need for what we do."

Five years later, Wiser has seen his brainchild expand beyond even his expectations.

At 6:59 p.m. on Sept. 24, 1997, technicians flipped a switch, and the news reports that had been airing in-house for weeks were released to viewers. Inspired by the Time Warner news channel New York 1, Bay News 9 started with many of the features viewers have come to know: weather reports "on the nines" of every hour; a repeating cycle of stories divided into hourlong "news wheels;" the vibrant red, white and blue color scheme.

At first, the channel was available in four counties, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee and Polk, and had a staff of about 84. Now, it reaches more than 900,000 households, has expanded to include Pasco, Citrus and Hernando counties, and has more than 100 employees.

[Photo courtesy Tim Boyles] Time Warner spent $5-million on a state-of-the-art Pinellas Park studio. But Bay News 9’s reporters still could use some equipment, including a satellite truck and a helicopter they could have access to full time.

And though Wiser won't release revenue information, he said the channel has reached many of his goals for ratings, income and regional visibility far sooner than he expected.

"When I sat down five years ago, I thought where we are today, we'd be in year eight or 10," Wiser said, noting that the channel is turning a profit. "I underestimated the readiness of this market."

Chief meteorologist Alan Winfield, a veteran of TV operations in Tulsa, Okla., and Seattle, remembered thinking that Wiser's initial projections were too optimistic.

"(He) had lofty goals. . . . At least, five years ago, that's how I saw them," Winfield said. "I had my doubts, coming from the world of network affiliates. Then, (viewer recognition) of our 'weather on the nines' slogan was showing up in research after just a few months. And that never happens."

Indeed, nothing seems to annoy Wiser more than the idea that Bay News 9's impact on the local TV news scene has gone unacknowledged.

[Photo courtesy Tim Boyles] Bay News 9 anchors include Susan Casper, left, Al Ruechel and Jen Holloway. Casper is set to leave at the end of the year.

The way local stations are more willing to interrupt programming for news updates or wall-to-wall coverage; the emphasis on up-to-the-minute weather information; the vibrant graphics and visuals: These are the trends that Wiser cites as evidence that other area stations are following a trail blazed by Bay News 9.

"Any general manager or news director who says Bay News 9 doesn't have an impact on their business is lying," Wiser said. "I know we're on in everybody else's newsrooms."

As you might expect, executives at other area TV news outlets see the situation differently.

"They've had no impact on our coverage," said Phil Metlin, vice president of news for Fox affiliate WTVT-Ch. 13. "It's true, their product is a lot better now than it was five years ago. But there are a lot of journalists who watch Bay News 9 so they can see a full press conference without getting out of their seats."

Noting that Bay News 9 often prerecords its anchor reports, playing back the material in a prearranged wheel of content, Metlin challenged Wiser's assertions, saying that area stations have always emphasized aggressive weather coverage and breaking news reports.

And as a cable creation, Bay News 9 has two sources of revenue: advertising and money from Time Warner Cable subscribers.

"No matter what they say, they're not as responsive to live news as they would have viewers believe," Metlin said. "I guess Bay News 9 would like to think they compete head-to-head with us, but you look at the (ratings) numbers, and it's just not true. If they were a startup broadcast news operation with the (ratings) they're getting, they would have gone under already without that (cable subscriber) revenue."

While acknowledging the strides Bay News 9 has made in five years, WTSP-Ch. 10 reporter Mike Deeson, a 20-year veteran of the market, said that area stations emphasize weather for two reasons:

Viewers want the information. And few news outlets can deliver it as timely and completely as television.

"It's the one instance there can be no argument TV stations are providing a public service," Deeson said. "We're giving the public what they want, and we can actually save lives."

No wonder Bay News 9's success can be traced to the weather.

Winfield credits El Nino. The weather system, which brought tornadoes, water spouts and squalls to the area every few days through 1997 and early 1998, gave the fledgling cable channel lots to report, often at times when broadcast stations' newscasts weren't on the air.

And unlike news coverage, where their new staff was still learning how to compete with better-equipped local broadcast reporters, meteorologists had all the tools they needed to equal the competition.

Bay News 9 fumbled in covering the first major storm that hit two days after its debut, unable to break out of its news wheel for continuous coverage. But its work on a tornado that hit Clearwater the next month, including reports from anchor Al Ruechel, who worked the scene barefoot after dropping his child off at school, helped cement its reputation.

"People want weather when they want it. . . . They don't necessarily want to wait until 11 at night," Winfield said, repeating a mantra heard often in the world of 24-hour cable news. "When we launched, every two to three days there would be some severe weather. It was tough to find coverage like that on anyone else's station."

In addition to its Pinpoint Doppler 9000 radar system, the channel has installed an imaging system called the Viper, allowing it to create 3-D views of all Florida storms to note whether a tornado is forming, flooding is imminent or other qualities.

Ruechel, an experienced area broadcaster who spent 10 years at WTSP, remembered how skeptical his former colleagues were about whether the Tampa Bay area offered enough news to fill a 24-hour news channel.

Now, he said, the channel faces a different task: "I think we're still trying to define our identity. We knew we would be successful as a headline service, but now we see research showing . . . people watching us for 20 minutes at a time. It puts the pressure on."

These days, Bay News 9's biggest challenge may be its size. The channel is outgrowing its 15,000-square-foot main studio, which houses its online and en espanol staffs, and the main news channel.

Industry watchers also wondered what might happen after it was announced that Advance/Newhouse Communication, which co-owned Time Warner's Tampa Bay area cable systems, would be running Bay News 9.

Because the company owns a lot of newspapers and news outlets (from the Star Ledger in Newark, N.J., to the New Yorker magazine), Wiser said, its executives value Bay News 9 and will continue supporting it. Last month, he turned down an offer to serve as vice president of news for Time Warner's other cable news channels to remain at Bay News 9 with Advance/Newhouse.

For anchor Susan Casper, whose story on a breakin at Tampa Mayor Dick Greco's home was the first news report to air on Bay News 9, the channel has been like a college.

She came to the channel fresh from a job at WMBB-TV in Panama City, initially working as a "one-man band," lugging around her camera gear and filming shots while also serving as a reporter.

Recently, she's served as midday anchor, but Casper has decided to leave the station at the year's end, concluding that she's ready to spread her wings in a bigger market.

"I've stepped out on faith on this one," said Casper, who turned down a contract renewal offer even though she doesn't have a job finalized. "This station has prepared me with invaluable experience. But I felt like, at this point in my career, it was time to move on."

Wiser said that much of Bay News 9's success has come from going where mainstream area newspaper and TV outlets are not.

Media General's Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Ch. 8 may get lots of ink for combining TV and newspaper efforts in journalism. But Bay News 9 also has convergence agreements, with newspapers such as the Citrus County Chronicle, the Bradenton Herald and the Lakeland Ledger, placing cameras in their newsrooms so staffers can deliver reports onair.

The channel will also team with WFLA-AM 970 for November's election, bringing morning show host Jack Harris into its studios to help with coverage.

There are still criticisms. Some say the channel's strict crime coverage guidelines discourage aggressive reporting, which Ruechel denied. The channel doesn't have a full-time investigative unit or consumer reporter, and some resources -- more than one satellite truck and a helicopter devoted to the channel full time -- remain out of reach.

Still, Wiser is ambitious about the future of Bay News 9. "There are a lot of underserved communities out there . . . not just ethnic groups, but places with geographic (isolation)," he said. "Our map has seven counties, and we cover all of them."

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