When TVNEWSDAY spoke to Liz Burns last week, she had a severe cold. But that wasn't all that was bothering her.

As head of the small family-owned TV group, Morgan Murphy Stations, she is frustrated that she doesn't have the resources to more aggressively pursue new media opportunities, concerned that broadcasting could lose ground in the transition to digital, conflicted over duopolies and has had it with the TV indecency police.

Yet, she says, she would buy more small-markets stations if she could without going "into debt up to my eyebrows."

As it is now, the Morgan Murphy group comprises four network-affiliated stations: KXLY Spokane, Wash. (ABC, DMA 77); WISC Madison, Wis. (CBS, DMA 85); KVEW/KAPP Yakima-Pasco-Richland-Kennewik, Wash. (ABC, DMA 125) and WKBT La Crosse-Eau Claire, Wis. (CBS, DMA 127).

In addition to running the group, Burns is chairman of the Association for Maximum Service Television and a respected member of the NAB board.

An edited transcript follows.

You represent privately owned, small market broadcasting. Do you sometimes get the feeling that you're not in the same business as some of the network station groups, or the newspaper-owned groups or the publicly owned groups?

Yeah, I do and for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I don't have the wherewithal to do some of the things I would really like to do. I don't have the critical mass to make some things happen. Having said that, I don't have Wall Street breathing down my neck to sell off every five years either. So I guess there are trade offs.

Do these divisions—private, public, big, little—cause tension within the industry, within the NAB?

Tension is probably overstating it. There are certainly different opinions. On the NAB board at this point there are enough voices that will kick back on some of doomsday people that we have on the board. There's more give and take and more conversation than there's been in the past and I think that's a good thing.

You said that one of the negatives of being a small operator is that you don't have the resources to do what you want to do. Well, if you had the money, what would you do?

One thing we're struggling with is all the new media. They're fun and they're sexy, but do they make money? Do they create a return that will make up for network compensation and the loss of national advertising? If I had a cushion and an opportunity came up or a new technology came up, we could just throw ourselves into it.

I think I would even look at adding stations, if I had the wherewithal and didn't have to go into debt up to my eyebrows to do it.

Where are you putting your investment dollars these days?

Right now we're treading water. This hasn't really been a terrific year unless you're a real political swing state and I don't know if 2007 is going to be a whole lot better. So, we're doing what we can with our Web sites and our U-Turn mobile and some of the other things that Neal [Oberg, VP, new media] is cooking up. They're working very hard to have a good business plan and they're working on teaching the stations how to sell it not as an add on, but as an independent and vertically integrated business.

I think Jay Ireland [NBC Universal TV Stations president] said it in TVNEWSDAY. We've got to be the site in town. We've got to be the one that everybody turns to rather than the newspaper site or whatever.  

Going back to an earlier comment, you said that you would consider buying other stations, but you're afraid to take on the debt. Aren't you saying that you're not sure that this is a good business to invest in these days?

No. I'm just saying that I don't have an appetite for that much debt. It doesn't have anything to do with the industry. I just don't want to threaten the stability of the group unless something came up that was such a fit like [WKBT] La Crosse was, and then I'd probably try to figure out how to do it. But I wouldn't go looking just to expand. [Morgan Murphy bought WKBT in 2000.]

What are your principal concerns about the digital transition? The final switch is just over two years away now.

After having spent those cajillion trillion dollars on doing the digital conversions, my concern is that we will end up with an inferior picture because cable and satellite for whatever reason decides to downconvert the signal or because consumers don't want to be bothered with over-the-air. | More …