So, here I am.
Obviously, I have added some new news sources to my daily rounds. Most of southeast Missouri, far southern Illinois and far western Kentucky are considered to be in the same media market, Cape-Carbondale-Paducah. The major TV news outlets belong to WPSD-6 (NBC, Paducah), KFVS-12 (CBS, Cape) and WSIL-3 (Harrisburg, though their stick is closer to Marion). The major papers are the Southeast Missourian, the Southern Illinoisan and the Paducah Sun. Evidently, the latter outlet didn’t consider “Western Kentuckian.”
I have found that, while these media outlets slightly focus on where they are located, they mostly think of themselves as part of the greater media market, spanning over significant part of three states, and even the far northeastern corner of Tennessee. Therefore, a news event in Cape will be covered by all six outlets, not ceded to the SEMOian/KFVS by the other four.
The TV DMA for Cape-Carb-Pad supposedly has 900,000 people. I’d like to know where, because if you add up the population of the biggest counties in the area (McCracken KY, Williamson IL, Jackson IL, Cape Girardeau MO), you only get 300,000, and surely there aren’t 600,000 people in those rural counties in MO, IL, KY and TN.
Also, political season around here should be interesting — since the market covers four states, there will be four states’ worth of political ads during every second October. In 2010, seats held by people named Bond, Blagojevich, Burris, Bunning and Bredesen will be up. Talk about Bs are wild :)
