Little Rock, Ark.

-By Eileen Davis Hudson

Although it is the state capital, Little Rock, in Central Arkansas, is

sometimes overshadowed by the explosive growth and development to the northwest, where two Fortune 500 companies, Wal-Mart (in Bentonville) and Tyson Foods (in Springdale), are headquartered. While the Little Rock area is

not experiencing the same kind of growth, it remains a strong, consistent market with major companies including Dillard's, ALLTEL Corp., Axciom Corp. and Stephens Co. located here.

A number of projects have transformed the area along the Arkansas River, which runs between Little Rock and sister city North Little Rock. The William J. Clinton Presidential Center sits at the heart of Little Rock's River Market District on the banks of the Arkansas River. The Clinton library and museum, which former president Bill Clinton dedicated in a ceremony in 2004, houses the largest presidential archive and 20,000 square feet of exhibit space.

In 1999, ALLTEL opened a state-of-the-art multipurpose venue in North Little Rock called the ALLTEL Arena. In Little Rock's downtown Financial District, five historic buildings are being renovated to include condominiums, upscale offices and retail. Phase I of the project, being called Lafayette Square, is expected to be completed in July.

The 57th-ranked Little Rock-Pine Bluff television market (531,470 homes) continues to show modest growth, with the spot market increasing 3.3 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to BIA Financial Network. The market is estimated by BIA to have finished 2005 with $85 million in revenue, an amount that is being projected to grow to $91.9 million in 2006, with several Congressional and local political races being run this year.

"This area continues to go through what I would call moderate, sustained growth," says Rick Rogala, vp/general manager of KARK-TV, Nexstar Broadcasting's NBC affiliate.

The dynamics of the local TV marketplace have evolved over the years into a three-station news race. For years, KARK, which Nexstar purchased in March 2003, dominated the market by a wide margin. Today, that lead has all but evaporated as the three stations—KARK, Allbritton Communications' ABC affiliate KATV and Gannett Co.'s CBS affiliate KTHV—battle for ratings supremacy throughout the day.

KARK's Rogala, who took over Sept. 1, 2005 as vp/gm, acknowledges the market has tightened considerably. Nielsen Media Research measures viewership in the Little Rock-Pine Bluff market using its diary system; KARK is not a Nielsen client. Rogala, who most recently headed his own media consultant company, says KARK is working to reclaim its former market leadership.

Since his arrival, Rogala has put in place a new management team to help him achieve that goal. The new team includes Rob Heverling who started last September as news director. He previously served in the same capacity at sister NBC affiliate KNWA-TV in Fayetteville, Ark.

The company also promoted KNWA's general sales manager Mike Vaughn last September to director of sales at KARK. Rob Thomas started last December as KARK's new creative services director. Thomas formerly worked in promotions at KTHV before a brief stint as marketing manager at WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C.

With severe weather common in the region, such as the spate of tornadoes that wreaked havoc in Arkansas and other parts of the Midwest last week, KARK recently built a new weather center and upgraded its weather-mapping and -tracking computer software, Rogala says.

In terms of programming, KARK made national headlines when it refused to air NBC's short-lived prime-time drama, The Book of Daniel. The station aired a local news special in its place, says Rogala. KARK plans to debut new syndicated talk show The Megan Mullally Show in September.

KTHV, which goes by the moniker "Today's THV," in February launched its digital channel THV2, the first in the market. The channel broadcasts 24-hour news and weather. It is available through KTHV's digital tier, the digital tiers of several Arkansas cable systems including Comcast, Charter Communications and Conway Corp., as well as online at THV2.com.

"We thought this [THV2] was innovative in that it would begin to make us even more of a 24-7 news operation," says Larry Audas, KTHV president/gm.

KTHV also creates news updates, along with newscasts and weathercasts for its Web site. The station also became the first in the market four years ago with high definition (although it still does not originate local programming in high-def, says Audas).

While much of the state's growth is concentrated to the north where Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods are headquartered, the Little Rock area remains strong for local media. "This is the capital city. There is a good, steady flow of both news and revenue here," says Audas, who adds, "It's a market that watches a lot of local news."

In the competition to attract news viewers, KTHV typically wins the morning news race, while KATV wins early news at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. The stations flip-flop in late news, says Audas.

With a relatively small but fast-growing Hispanic population, local media are also trying to serve area Spanish-speakers. For instance, the staff of local Spanish-language weekly, ¡Hola Arkansas! translate KTHV's 10 o'clock late news, which is then broadcast on the station's SAP channel.

KATV is one of the nation's top-ranked ABC affiliates. In the November Nielsen sweeps, KATV ranked No. 1 in households among ABC affils with 5 p.m. local newscasts, No. 2 at 6 p.m. and No. 6 at 10 p.m. In February, the station earned a 16 rating/29 share in households for its 6 p.m. newscast. Executives at KATV did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.

KATV's lead female anchor, Kate Sullivan, resigned effective April 7 to become morning co-anchor at CBS flagship WCBS-TV in New York. Sullivan started at KATV in 2000 as a reporter before being promoted to anchor two years later.

Clear Channel Communications owns the local duopoly of Fox affiliate KLRT and UPN affiliate KASN. KLRT launched its 9 p.m. late news in 2004. Chuck Spohn, vp/gm of KLRT and KSAN, says he's pleased so far with the performance of the market's lone prime-time newscast. In February 2006, the newscast earned a 7 household share, versus the 4 share it earned in February 2005. Spohn says the newscast was five years in the making.

KASN, one of the top 10 UPN affiliates in the country in terms of ratings, does not produce local news. The station's programming consists of a court block from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by African American sitcoms including The Cosby Show, Girlfriends and The Bernie Mac Show, both before and after UPN prime.

Spohn says he cannot discuss the future of the station when the UPN and WB networks merge to form the CW network.

On March 30, the new MyNetworkTV network announced 30 more affiliation agreements, including one with WB affiliate KWBF-TV, owned by Little Rock-based Equity Broadcasting. The company also owns local Independent station KYPX. Executives at the stations did not return phone calls for comment. The new network launches Sept. 5.

Cebridge Connections and Comcast are the dominant cable service providers in the Little Rock-Pine Bluff market. Comcast has 90,000 customers in the market, while Cebridge has 110,000 subscribers. Cebridge, based in St. Louis, entered the Little Rock market in 2005 when it purchased Cox Communications' local cable systems.

Cable penetration in the area stands at a paltry 56 percent, according to Nielsen, far lower than the national top 50 market average of 65 percent for cable penetration via Scarborough Research. Conversely, satellite penetration in the market at 29 percent (according to Nielsen) exceeds Scarborough's national average of 22 percent.

Part of the reason for the low number of cable subscribers is because the expansive market includes a lot of wide-open, sparsely populated spaces. The market's population is clustered in the Little Rock metro area.

"There are a lot of rural homes that are just not passed," says Dave Carter, south central area vp for Comcast Spotlight, Comcast's advertising sales arm.

Comcast Spotlight serves as the local interconnect, serving 215,0000 subscribers, or 90 percent of cable homes, says Carter. Comcast's systems in and around Little Rock offer 48 insertable networks; the interconnect offers 16 common insertable networks, he says. A small cable system of 15,000 subs owned by the city of Conway, Ark., called Conway Corp., is also part of the interconnect.

Although Comcast has not completed its digital buildout in Little Rock, it expects to do so by 2007, says Carter. However, the company does offer video on demand and telephone service in the area.

Comcast Sports Southeast carries Southeastern Conference sports and the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, whose various sports teams, particularly football, are elevated to the level of a national sports franchise in the eyes of their many rabid fans.

In local newspapers, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock is the largest newspaper in the state. The Democrat-Gazette's Monday-to-Friday circulation averaged 176,917 as of September 2005, down 3.1 percent compared to the period ended September 2004, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Its Sunday circulation declined 2.5 percent to 273,408.

Walter E. Hussman Jr. is the owner and publisher of the Democrat-Gazette through his Little Rock-based company, WEHCO Media. The Democrat-Gazette uses an extensive bureau system to cover the market and areas outside the market. Besides its main office in Little Rock, the newspaper's local news bureaus are located in Benton, Conway, Fort Smith, Jonesboro, Pine Bluff and northwest Arkansas. The paper added the Conway office within the past year. It also has a bureau in Washington, D.C.

The northwest Arkansas edition is an autonomous office of about 400 employees, including a 100-person newsroom. Subscribers of the D-G up there also receive a daily copy of either the Northwest Arkansas Times or the Benton County Daily Record inserted into the main paper.

The Democrat-Gazette's latest major effort was the April 6 introduction of its Spanish-language weekly newspaper in northwest Arkansas, where there is a larger Hispanic population than anywhere else in the state (it is estimated about 50,000 Hispanics make their home in the area). Called Noticias Libres (loosely translated as Free Press), the newspaper has a free distribution system using racks at about 120 Hispanic-owned businesses and at another 100 or so high-traffic areas in the region, says Hector Cueva, gm of Noticias Libres and circulation director of the D-G's northwest Arkansas edition.

Noticias Libres launched with a 10,000-copy initial press run. It is being produced in conjunction with the D-G's sister paper in Chattanooga, Tenn., the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Noticias Libres' staff in northwest Arkansas will be responsible for about four to five pages of local news. Noticias Libres in Chattanooga, which launched in January, is responsible for compiling the national and international news and handling layout for the northwest Arkansas edition, says Cueva.

The D-G is entering a competitive market where its rival in northwest Arkansas, The Morning News, already publishes two Spanish-language weeklies. Other local publications include Arkansas Business, a weekly business newspaper and the alternative newsweekly, Arkansas Times.

In local radio, the Little Rock market (ranked 85th) grew 5.2 percent in revenue between 2000 and 2005, according to BIA. However, the firm estimates that the market declined 3 percent from 2004 to 2005, ending 2005 with what it projects to have been $32.1 million in total revenue. BIA forecasts Little Rock will remain flat, adding just $300,000 to grow to $32.6 million in 2006. Radio behemoths Citadel Broadcasting and Clear Channel Communications dominate the local radio marketplace, controlling a combined 75 percent share of Little Rock's radio revenue (see Radio Ownership chart on p. 19).

Clear Channel's 100,000-watt Country powerhouse KSSN-FM is the perennial leader in the Little Rock radio market, which ranks 85th in the country. KSSN scored its highest average quarter-hour share in more than a year when it earned a 10.6 share in the fall Arbitron survey, up from a 9.0 share in the summer book (among listeners 12-plus). KSSN is also the market's top biller by far, earning an estimated $5.1 million in revenues in 2005, according to BIA.

On Dec. 26, 2005, Clear Channel flipped its Adult Contemporary KMSX at 94.9 FM to Gospel under the new call sign KHLR-FM.

Citadel's Urban Adult Contemporary KOKY-FM bills itself as "Legendary Soul." While the KOKY call letters are legendary in the market, having been around for decades, the current incarnation of KOKY is only about five years old. Still, the outlet is consistently among the top-ranked stations in the market.

KOKY had been second overall in ratings behind KSSN until the fall book, when sister station KIPR-FM, Citadel's Urban outlet in Pine Bluff, soared to an 8.3 share from a 5.5 share in the summer survey period. KIPR's ratings improvement, coupled with KOKY's fall to a 5.8 share in the fall from a 7.0 share in the summer enabled KIPR to leapfrog from sixth place in the market to second (12-plus). KOKY finished fourth.

At the start of the year, Citadel promoted KOKY program director Mark Dylan to operations manager for the company's Little Rock Urban cluster, which also includes Gospel station KPZK-AM.

In addition, Citadel promoted its Little Rock Urban operations manager and KIPR program director Joe Booker to Little Rock Urban director/programming.

KIPR is the market's third-highest biller at $2.5 million, behind No. 2 sibling Hot Adult Contemporary station KURB-FM with $2.9 million in estimated 2005 revenue, according to BIA. However, KURB has seen its ratings slide over the last two books, to a 4.6 share (12-plus) in the fall, down from a 6.5 share in the spring and summer surveys.

Last month, Citadel put 11 of its radio stations in seven markets into a "stand-by divestiture trust," called the Last Bastion Station Trust LLC. Three Little Rock stations placed into the trust were Gospel stations KVLO-FM and KPZK-FM and News/Talk/Sports KARN-FM (which is simulcast with KARN-AM). The 11 stations will remain in a holding pattern in the trust pending a decision by the Federal Communications Commission on whether Citadel's planned merger with ABC Radio constitutes a change in control of Citadel. A favorable ruling would mean Citadel may keep its stations, even in markets in which its over-the-limit market share had been grandfathered, including Little Rock. Citadel owns 10 stations in the Little Rock market, including one (KVLO) that does not show up in the Arbitrons.

Lamar Advertising is the dominant company in Little Rock's outdoor advertising scene. Lamar offers permanent and rotary bulletins, as well as 30-sheet posters.