Many newspaper and television partnerships are starting to sleep in separate beds evidenced by the selling off, laying off and trolling for bidders by such media giants as the Tribune Co.(TRB), Belo Corp. (BLC), E. W Scripps (SSP), and New York Times Co. (NYT).
According to this WashingtonPost.com article, last week the New York Times Co. sold its nine TV stations for close to $600 million after it parted ways with Discovery Communications on a joint TV channel.
And then there is Belo Corp. who recently laid off veteran television reporters whose stories appeared on Belo's 19 broadcast stations replacing them with videographers who will provide digital video for the Web sites of Belo's 11 newspapers.
Tribune Co. has put themselves up for sale but with 11 newspapers and 24 broadcast stations no one has taken a real interest. They are considering spinning off the TV stations.
Earlier this week E.W. Scripps was considering roughly the same thing by splitting off their 19 newspapers from their 10 TV stations.
What soured things between TV and newspapers?
According to the article the Internet, or to be more specific YouTube and MySpace. It makes more financial sense to pay for entry-level videographers to shoot video of key events and then post on a Web site then it is to pay a TV reporter, video photographer and producer to create news reports.
Ultimately they have to go with what draws viewers and readers and r
ight now that seems to be popular videos. Advertisers can be sold on such content and deals to that effect have been made with such online dominators Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG). The article states that in November, seven other newspaper chains, including MediaNews Group, signed a deal with Yahoo to use the Internet portal's technology to sell ads in the group's 176 papers. The Washington Post Co., New York Times, Gannett and others are working on a similar deal with Google.
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