An interesting session with the latest class of Leadership Akron at City Hall, as the NewsNight Akron panelists got in an hour of yapping (our favorite pastime) in between University of Akron Bliss Institute Dr. John Green and Mayor Plusquellic.
On center stage: Eric Mansfield from WKYC-TV; Jody Miller, formerly print but now more work for public television; M.L. Schultze of WKSU-FM; Steve Hoffman of the Akron Beacon Journal and yours truly.
After doing more than a few of these panels I am always struck by one thing just about everyone agrees with, regardless of their political leanings...how much danger Akron is of becoming marginalized as yet another suburb to the idea of "greater Cleveland." Some may view this as rather parochial, opting instead for a more regional approach to solving the considerable problems here, but I think it goes deeper than simply waving that magic wand of government consolidation. People south of the lakeshore really don't want to see their identify swallowed up in the whole of a larger NEO-identity.
From a radio perspective I think it is important to note the Akron market ranks 75th nationally with 596,500 listeners measured by Arbitron, the ratings company. Among the big markets in Ohio, the Cincinnati market (#28 with 1, 773,000) outranks Cleveland (#29, 1,764,000) by just a tick. In reality the Cleveland market is generally considered bigger because of it's "throw" across the market boundaries to include influence into Akron, Canton, Lorain and a reasonable chunk of the Youngstown area.
But if you were to consider Akron and Canton (#129, 347,800) markets as an area with far more in common than apart it puts our interests at 944,300 -- comparable to a Buffalo, New York, Louisville, Kentucky or Richmond, Virginia. This is something we've long seen in TV coverage of this area -- a third of the Cleveland television market, big enough to pay attention to but small enough to warrant the same kind of coverage given the "East side" or the "West side" when making editorial judgments on stories earning precious time in a 30 or 60 minute newscast.
Now you can call me parochial for the mindset that the five-county metro of greater Akron (south Summit, northern Stark, parts of Portage, Wayne and Medina) matters more to the economic health of Akron-Canton than what may necessarily matter to the NEO-region led by Cleveland but it is those local interests, I think, that hold the key to how and why Akron-Canton can prosper as an entity and market unto itself.
Most would agree the health of the region is important, but political decisions are still made on a local level and not as a region.
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So, why does WAKR enter award contests as a small market?
ReplyDeleteWow....I can see the claws stretching all the way from campus.
ReplyDeleteLove the catfight analogy.
ReplyDeleteWe have discussed entering awards competition upmarket. For those lost in the details most awards programs have categories (such as reporting, anchoring, investigative reporting...) and classes of entry (radio v TV, large market v small) with market sizes usually determined either by ratings-service ranking (Arbitron or Neilsen) or even sizes of news department staff (PRNDI, the Public Radio News Directors group, uses this metric I believe.)
I think it's a good debate to have. For AP Awards we compete with stations in Dayton, Toledo, Youngstown, Canton and Lorain/Elyria for the most part. The large markets are usually reserved for the metro (big C city) stations or statewide operations such as Ohio Public Radio and TV and ONN. RTNDA uses market size 1-50 for large markets and 51-up for small (Akron is 75th) but we compete regionally against stations in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.
There are other considerations as well, such as being part of a larger operation. Public stations, for example, have expanded resources by use of their statewide shared services from Ohio Public Radio & TV...Clear Channel stations clearly benefit from the efficiencies of having reporters on a statewide basis working out of individual stations, the "hub and spoke" model that helps create a network among stations in the big C cities but also CC operations in Toledo, Youngstown and Akron/Canton.
Truth is there's no "one size fits all" definition since the power of local news often comes by our own definitions of how we do our jobs. WKSU adopts a different focus than WAKR, for example...which is different from WTAM and it's sister/satellite operations at WHLO.
In the long run it winds up becoming "take your pick."