GRIFFIN LAYS CLAIM TO ALL OF OKLAHOMA

David Griffin has a simple goal: Dominate the production and distribution of electronic news throughout Oklahoma.

And the third-generation broadcaster appears well on his way to achieving it.

As president and CEO of the family-owned Griffin Communications, he runs CBS affiliate KWTV in Oklahoma City (DMA 46); a CBS-CW duopoly, KOTV-KWBT, in Tulsa (DMA 60); and the Radio Oklahoma Network, which delivers news, weather and sports to 32 radio affiliates in the state.

According to Griffin, the two CBS affiliates are news powerhouses. In fact, he says, KWTV airs the highest-rated late news in the country. Last November, it posted a 17.3/27.

Griffin also is partnered with Cox Communications in NewsNow 53, a cable news channel serving Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

And it is moving aggressively to extend the Griffin reach through local Web sites and mobile services.

Embracing new media comes naturally to Griffin. His grandfather, J.T., was a radio pioneer in the 1930s and his father, John, put KWTV on the air 54 years ago.

In 2000, the company purchased the KOTV Tulsa from Belo and five years later it purchased the WB (soon to be CW) affiliate from Cascade Broadcasting.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY Editor Harry A. Jessell, Griffin talks about taking the company’s tradition of news leadership into the new-media age and why the Oklahoma TV markets are doing better than most.

An edited transcript:

Were you at NATPE?

No. We are trying to diminish the amount of syndicated property that we air. Our strategy is to put on as much news content as we can.

The focus of our company is the state of Oklahoma. It’s a focus that nobody else has. We’ve got about almost 400 employees across the state who are solely dedicated to gathering news and information and distributing news and information across the state. We like our competitive advantage in that space.

You have a good position in TV, radio and cable. What about the new media?

We have just beefed up our Internet presence in the state. We had a normal TV Web site in Tulsa and then we had a joint venture here in OklahomaCity with a newspaper [The Oklahoman] for a site called newsok.com. But a year ago about this time, we sold our interest in that basic URL to the newspaper. They bought us out of that equation.

So, on Jan. 1, we relaunched the Tulsa site and we launched a brand new Web site for the TV station in Oklahoma City called Newsnine.com. We went from basically three employees dedicated to the Internet to around 27 in and around Oklahoma companywide.

I notice that you chose to go with WorldNow for your station sites in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Why?

Going it alone is a really a bad strategy because we can’t keep up with technology. We would be spending a whole lot of money trying to keep up with all the video players. We don’t have the scale to do that.

So what we did was we looked at all the providers. They’re all really good. We just felt WorldNow had the best platform and the most flexibility for us.

Don’t you feel that going with a company like WorldNow forces you to use templates and limits what you can do?

Actually, in our dealings with WorldNow, we did add a lot of customization. That was a requirement for us to go with them and they’ve been perfect to work with. So while it is somewhat of a template, it is a customizable template.

What are you doing in the mobile front?

That’s kind of phase two of our Web development. Right now, our focus is the relaunching our Tulsa site and the launching of Newsnine.com and then the execution of that. We’ve got a lot of opportunity in that space.

Joint venturing with the local newspaper seems like a good idea. Why didn’t that work out?

It worked out great for both parties. The problem is that newspapers, at least the one in Oklahoma City, are trying to be television stations. Because of the changing nature of the newspaper business, they know that they’ve got to be in the video business.

In Oklahoma City, they realized that that put them in conflict with us. So, without any lawyers in the room, we worked out a buyout. We wrote it up on one sheet of paper, signed off and said, all right, that’s a fair deal.

At NATPE, at a WorldNow session, there was talk about the need for stations to get away from news and information on the Web and to go to verticals as Belo and Hearst-Argyle have done with their high school sites.

Yep. Everybody’s talking about that in the industry. That’s a natural extension. It’s really unlimited so we are thinking about that and working on that.

But nothing imminent?

You know what? We just launched our Web sites on Jan. 1 so we’re a couple of months away from any discussions about that yet.

What percentage of your overall revenue comes out of the Internet now and how do you see that number growing over the next five years?

It’s negligible today. Hopefully, it will be 3 to 6 percent over the next five years. If it’s 6, I would say it’s a great business on its own and we’re pushing it to be 6.

So how is business in Oklahoma City? If any business is doing well, it’s got to be gas and oil.

Actually, the economy is pretty diverse here. Dell has got a big facility with 2,000 employees in Oklahoma City. Tulsa’s very, very diverse with a lot of corporate headquarters and businesses. But, needless to say, oil and gas certainly helps. Both our Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets were up in 2007 north of 9 percent excluding political.

Are you talking about your stations or the markets as a whole?

The markets. And this year, we expect them to be up double digits including political; 5 to 8 percent excluding political.

Let’s talk about that. Why is that so?

Oklahoma has two unique categories that are replacing the loss of automotive dollars that nobody else really has or most people don’t have. The first one is those oil and gas companies. In Oklahoma City, in particular, we have a couple of them that are pretty heavy advertisers.

What are they advertising?

They’re trying to hire the best and the brightest employees. They’re trying to do good in our community. One oil company, Devin Energy, promotes a “Have You Read to Your Kids Tonight?” campaign. They’re good partners, terrific to have in the community. They support a lot of different philanthropic organizations.

What’s the other category?

The other one is really broken down into two. Oklahoma has more federally recognized Indian tribes than any other state. Several of the tribes do image advertising. The Chickasaw Nation, for instance, talks about what’s going on with the nation and how they help the state. The Cherokees do the same thing.

Why do they feel the need to do that?

Well, it’s probably two-fold. One is they want people to see the contribution that they are making to the state and its growth. Those are really big businesses today that do a lot of work at the state capital so they’re probably trying to influence some of that.

The second component of that is casinos. We passed a lottery law a couple of years ago and we’ve seen an explosion in Indian casinos. That’s the other category that’s really helped us out.

There are people starting to talk about the CW and whether it can make a go of it. What do you think?

It has been a challenge. We bought the station as a WB affiliate in December 2005 and the WB went away that following January. I think it was a lot harder than they initially thought. You just combine the two and one plus one should equal more than two. It ain’t quite working out that way.

The other DMAs in Oklahoma are Sherman, Texas-Ada, Okla. [DMA 161] and Wichita Falls, Texas-Lawton, Okla. [DMA 149]. Are you interested in expanding into those markets?

At this time, probably not. What we’re trying to do is really digest what we have one and then make a significant investment in the Internet space in Oklahoma.

Does it bother you that CBS is taking more and more of their programming and distributing it on platforms other than TV stations in primetime?

Does it bother me? There’s not much I can do about it and that’s why our whole business plan is local information in the state of Oklahoma. If it bothered me, what good would it do?

Do you see yourself getting into local programming other than news—local sports, hosted movies, entertainment? I mean there’s some thought that TV might revert to where it was 30 years ago.

Our focus is primarily local news, weather and sports. I don’t see us getting into movies or anything like that, but I think maybe the definition of news is expanding. It could include some type of reality pieces in the morning.

As the news leader in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, will you be the first to offer HD news?

That’s a great question. We are building a brand new media center in Tulsa to house our two TV stations and new media division.

We have bought land and will be breaking ground sometime in April on a new 50,000 square-foot facility.

We’re doing all the design work now, but the question is, is it an all HD plant or not. We’re in the middle of making that decision.

How could it not be HD?

It’s a big ticket item. So we’ve got a lot of good equipment right now and we’re going to migrate some over. But we’re having discussions about what HD means to viewers.

What about OklahomaCity? What’s the HD plan there?

The HD plan is basically the same. We’re just investigating it. Most of the equipment that we have is HD-ready, but we have not pulled the trigger on HD yet.

Are you ready for the DTV transition? It’s just a year away now.

We are all ready, I’m told, at all three television stations. We have tower crews lined up, we’ve got equipment on order and we’re ready to go.

If it doesn’t sound like you’re ready. It sounds like you have a lot of work to do.

Yeah. We have got a lot of work to do to get there.

Your family has been in the station business for more than 50 years. How does the business today compare with the good old days?

It’s a great business and revenue. We’re doing really well. The company’s doing great and there’s a lot of money being spent in advertising in the state of Oklahoma and all over. You’ve just got to be creative in how you go out and get it.