Hearst-Argyle Shows Its Stripes

The new media gusher is starting to trickle down to midsize outfits focusing on the television station and newspaper businesses.

Big multimedia powerhouses like Disney (DIS Quote) have set the pace on marrying new media forms like the iPod to TV shows and movies. Big-city rivals like CBS (CBS Quote) and News Corp. (NWS Quote) are pushing to keep up. And behind them, outfits like Belo (BLC Quote), Gannett(GCI Quote) and Hearst-Argyle(HTV Quote) see a chance to broaden their appeal.

As popular network TV content is made available on those new platforms, TV station groups that have extensive affiliate agreements with the networks could be well-placed to cash in, observers say.

In 2005, Gannett saw online revenue rise 50% from a year ago, while Belo's interactive unit saw revenue jump 40%. At Belo, the online business now accounts for 3% of ad revenue. Those figures show how new media partnerships could add significant dollars to the bottom line even at companies sometimes brushed off as staid newspaper publishers.

At Hearst-Argyle, the second-largest NBC affiliate group after Gannett, partnerships being forged through the NBC Affiliate Futures Committee are starting to reap rewards. NBC Universal is a division of GE (GE Quote).

Internet Broadcasting, a joint partnership in which Hearst-Argyle owns a significant equity interest, is the primary developer of Web sites specifically for broadcast TV stations. It hosts the Web sites for its stations, as well as NBC-owned stations and those of Washington Post (WPO Quote), Cox Television and others. The stations form a sort of alternative national network whose monthly aggregate audience falls short of only MSNBC and CNN among news sites, according to Nielsen Net Ratings.

For example, the 2004 Athens edition of NBCOlympics.com, a Web partnership involving NBC and its affiliates, drew more than 13 million unique viewers and nearly 263 million page views. Hearst-Argyle's Terry Mackin, who chairs the NBC Affiliate Board and co-chairs the NBC Affiliate Futures Committee, said, "We expect impressive results for the Torino edition of the site, which has drawn record participation of NBC-owned and affiliated stations in 23O markets."