'Sun' Teams With NBC Station

By: Mediaweek Staff (Mediaweek WBAL, Hearst-Argyle Television's NBC affiliate in Baltimore, last week launched a cross-media alliance with The Sun of Baltimore that leverages the station's weather expertise and the paper's suburban news coverage. The content-only agreement follows the arrival in January of Tim Franklin as editor and senior vice president of the Tribune Co.'s Sun and the paper's announcement in February that it had severed its 2-year-old news and cross-promotion alliance with WMAR, Scripps Broadcasting's ABC station.

Although The Sun said it wasn't closing the door on alliances with multiple media partners, it would seem that WBAL, the top-ranked news operation in the market, and the newspaper are a good fit. "WBAL is a hard-news station," said Franklin, pointing to WBAL's No. 1 news ratings at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. "We want to enhance our brand and get more eyes on our content."

As part of the pact, Tom Tasselmyer, WBAL's chief meteorologist, is featured daily on the back page of The Sun's Maryland section. He also fields daily questions on the paper's Web site (www.baltimoresun.com). WBAL, which is seeking to close the ratings gap in mornings with WJZ, Viacom's owned-and-operated CBS station, will air a package of stories from The Sun covering the suburban and outlying counties, taking advantage of the paper's 370 reporters, compared to its 66. The two are also talking about WBAL airing select stories in late news that will appear in The Sun the next morning.

"We'll get some advance notice on stories, things we would not have had ourselves," said Bill Fine, president and general manager of WBAL, who added that he has high hopes for the relationship. "We're trying to identify models that work and can help each other, but not on a full-time basis."

That sort of approach has already paid off for WESH, Hearst-Argyle TV's NBC affiliate in Orlando, Fla., which three years ago embarked on an alliance when Franklin was editor of the Orlando Sentinel, another Tribune paper. That partnership also began with the station's weather expertise and culminated in a profitable Web site (www.orlandoweather.com). The two outlets collaborate and share costs on political projects, including co-sponsorship of debates and polling, and some sports programming. The largest project to date was a special investigative series, "Building Homes: Building Problems," which ran 20 consecutive weekdays in October and November on WESH. The paper and WESH hired an engineer and consultant to do the study, something neither outlet could afford to do on its own.

The partnership, said Bill Bauman, president/general manager of WESH, is all about building brands. "There isn't a rating point in this relationship, but it does add to our credibility. If we can continue to generate unique content, that will pay off down the road," he said.