Virtual Stations Help WB Double Group of Affiliates By CARLOS MARTINEZ Staff Reporter When viewers in Santa Barbara watch KWCA-TV, they may think they’re watching a hometown station. In fact, every bit of “local” content is fed to their local cable company from the WB’s communications hub in Los Angeles. “It’s all very technological and high tech, when it comes down to it, but it is in one sense a hometown station,” said Natalie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the network. KWCA is part of the Burbank-based network’s 100-Plus Station Group a group of virtual television stations available only to cable TV subscribers in small markets like Santa Barbara; Bakersfield; Macon, Ga.; and Lansing, Mich. The stations, which are merely feeds into cable operators in these smaller markets, are helping the network improve its viewer base and its advertising revenue. Using technology unavailable even five years ago, the 109 virtual stations running on cable systems across the country appear much as an on-air station would, with local advertising spots, local news reports and sometimes local on-air personalities. “If we didn’t have these computers and all this technology, none of this would be possible,” said Russ Myerson, executive vice president for the network’s 100-plus Station Group. Although the station group was established four years ago, the WB created the bulk of its 109 virtual stations just in the last two years. With affiliates already in the top 100 television markets, the WB is able to combine its reach with that of its virtual stations in the second tier, markets ranked 101 through 200 by Nielsen Research. The network had previously been shut out of many of these markets because there were no unaffiliated stations available. Consequently, network CEO Jamie Kellner established the virtual stations program, called 100-Plus, as a way to give the network a presence it would otherwise not have. “We didn’t want it to seem like this generic national network just because we were on cable,” Myerson said. The group may make up about half of the network’s total stations, but it still only represents 7.5 percent of its total viewers. Even that, however, is significant when it comes to dealing with advertisers, Myerson said. “It shows them that we have full coverage of all the states, from Portland Me. to Portland, Ore. and all the markets in between,” he said. The strategy is working, said Timothy Wallace, a media analyst with Banc of America Securities. The network’s ratings and sales have inched up so far this season. The fact that a number of its new shows have caught on with TV viewers has pushed the network from last to fifth place in the six-network race for ratings so far this season. Still, some of the credit goes to the nearly 2 million viewers who are seeing the WB for the first time this season, Wallace said. The network has increased its advertising revenue commitments for this season to $600 million, compared to $475 million last year. WB does not break out revenue from its virtual stations. In 1998, the WB and IBM worked out a deal to develop a nationwide data network that could digitize ads from local advertisers in far-flung locations and insert them in specific segments of a station’s satellite feed from the WB in Southern California. This technology, Myerson said, was a first for a broadcast network, allowing virtual stations their own commercials and local news spots, giving it a distinctive local flavor even though they are actually produced, in some cases, thousands of miles away. The network has a four-person on-air news staff based in Dayton, Ohio that supplies morning news and weather reports to affiliates all over the country. Their reports are culled from national news wires and CNN. All of the rest of the programming emanates from the network’s satellite communications center near L.A. International Airport. The satellite feed is sent into local cable companies equipped with PC-based Station in a Box devices, which in turn splices the spots where needed. The technology, which cost $45 million to develop and deploy, is at the heart of the station group’s success. To sell commercial time in the local markets, WB has gone into business with network affiliates that, in larger markets, would be fierce competitors. In return, local large network affiliates and cable operators get a cut of the WB’s local ad revenue. For the near future, cable companies receive the network programming free of charge, but that could change when current agreements expire in 2008.