How Your Local TV Station Is Cashing In on Politics

About a year ago, Cleveland’s Fox affiliate, WJW, added an extra half-hour of news starting at 4 a.m. That brought the total of live, local programming to 12-and-a-half hours a day—and more than 14 hours including repeats. “During the time you’re awake, pretty much we’re in local news,” says WJW general manager Paul Perozeni.

The station’s expanded lineup is part of a broader effort by owner Tribune Media to increase local newscasts. The goal? To grab advertisers looking for live programming during which viewers might be more likely to see commercials, especially those from the political campaigns and super-PACs collectively pouring billions into television advertising. In 2012, WJW collected more than $30 million in revenue from political ads, about a fifth of Tribune’s total annual revenue from such ads. Perozeni wants to do better this year. “No one is going to DVR the morning news and watch it at 10 o’clock at night,” he says. “From an advertiser’s standpoint, that makes a station like WJW very appealing.”