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Market Profile

FOR HENRY MALDONADO, GENERAL MANAGER OF WKMG, CBS' AFFILIATE IN ORLANDO, 2002 was a year to remember. For the first time since 1984, the Post-- Newsweek-owned station achieved top ranking with its 11 p.m. local newscast during the November sweeps. With an impressive 9.5 average rating and 18 share, WKMG edged out NBC affiliate WESH, a Hearst-Argyle property, which recorded a 9.2/17, and trounced market leader WF-fV, Cox Broadcasting's ABC affiliate, which fell to a 6/11.

"CBS prime[-time programming] has performed very well, and that really fed the 11 p.m. news here," says Rich Melin, media director of Orlando agency Cramer-Krasselt. Of the market's players, WKMG's newscasts, marked by "a certain edginess," stand out, added Melin. Orlando, the U.S.' 20th-largest television market, is home to 1,224,470 TV households, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Maldonado pointed not just to strong local news lead-ins such as prime-time hits CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Survivor, but also to the station's heavier concentration on investigative pieces during November. "We attribute [the late news growth] to a combination of good investigations in our local news and good leadins," says Maldonado.

The news wasn't so rosy for WKMG in earlier dayparts, however, when its newscasts trailed both its main rivals. The market's long-- dominant but slipping news station, WFTV, still remained comfortably ahead of the pack at 5, 5:30 and 6 p.m. WKMG in December shuffled its early-news lead-ins, moving The John Walsh Show to 4 p.m. in the afternoon from 9 a.m., replacing Inside Edition and Frasier. Now, Walsh follows Dr. Phil at 3 p.m.

WKMG also continues to lag in the local morning news race. Maldonado says to boost its fortunes in the morning, the station overhauled the 5 to 7 a.m. block in July, introducing a new format and anchors. The move came in advance of CBS' radical revamp of The Early Show in the fall.

Despite its continued ratings dominance, WFTV's news has lost ground in recent years. At 11 p.m., the station has lost more than 40 percent of its household audience since 1996.

The station has gone through five news directors in the last six years. In September, Cox elevated Bill Hoffman, sales director, to president/gm, for WFTV as well as Cox's independent...