-By Katy Bachman

In a market populated by major corporations including Starbuck's, Microsoft, and Boeing, a number of the local media outlets are operated by smaller, local-based companies including Fisher Communications, Sandusky Radio, and The Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times is one of the few remaining major city dailies independently owned and operated. Under a joint operating agreement, The Times handles circulation for Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the oldest morning paper in the state. Both papers team to produce the Sunday paper.

Fisher, which recently trimmed its radio portfolio except for a trio in its hometown, is one of the three companies to operate a TV duopoly in the market, along with Belo and Tribune. Cox TV has the CBS affiliate (KIRO-TV) and CBS has KSTW, its owned-and-operated CW affiliate.

KING-TV, Belo's NBC affiliate and longtime news leader in the market, produces Evening Magazine, one of the few local daily news magazine programs in the U.S. While KING has dominated late news and other news dayparts for 12 years, the station was knocked off its perch in March by Tribune's Fox affiliate, KCPQ-TV. The scrappy, American Idol-stoked station's Q13 Fox News@10 had the largest late news viewing audience at either 11 p.m. or 10 p.m. among all major demos.

Despite strong competition from the nation's largest radio groups, Sandusky has the top-rated station, Adult Contemporary KRWM-FM. A year ago, Bonneville entered the Seattle radio market, picking up three stations via a three-market station swap with Entercom, which now has four stations.

As for out of home, Titan Worldwide has the contract for King County Metro Transit, the sixth largest transit agency in the nation.

Vital Stats:

* TV DMA Rank: 14
* Population 2-plus: 4,354,799
* TV households: 1,782,040
* No. of TV stations (Net/Ind/Public/Local Cable): 9/5/3/0
* No. of cable households: 1,587,620
* Radio metro rank: 25
* Population 12-plus: 3,328,500
* No. of radio stations (rated): 31
* No. newspapers (Daily/Weekly): 13/42

The Numbers:

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