Building bridges isn’t easy. They are massive construction projects, requiring heavy equipment, meticulous planning, skilled laborers, complicated alliances, and generous support. But you don’t have to tell that to Tampa Bay Online, the third member of the media alliance in Tampa. They’ve been in the bridge-building business for years.
In 1994, a partnership between the Tampa Tribune and Prodigy, the online service, made the Tribune one of the pioneers of online news. By July 1996, the emergence of the World Wide Web made an independent online entity feasible. The Tribune created the umbrella site, TampaBayOnline.com which included TampaTribune.com, a weather site, and a sports site. In the early days of news on the web TBO.com became the destination for Tampa Bay information.
Meanwhile, WFLA was creating its own web foundation, registering the WFLA.com name in August 1995. Initially the site was little more than an outlet for station promotions and the local link to MSNBC.com content.
The station’s site and the newspaper sites were separate, but not equal. Although both belonged to Media General and they provided links to each other, the production, design, and planning of the sites remained under the control of the separate properties (WFLA and Tampa Tribune). TBO.com outstaffed WFLA.com 15 to 1.
By the late ’90s, demand for higher online revenue increased, but support to build an innovative site lagged. As new media competition grew, TampaBayOnline.com’s hold on the local online audience slipped.
In 1998, the picture changed when Kirk Read, then a 28-year-old who had worked his way through the Media General ranks, became chairman of the WFLA/Tribune Cooperation Committee. Created in 1992 to discuss media alliances, the committee spent more time doing post mortems of missed opportunities and modest successes than envisioning a convergent future.
Read was convinced of the need to combine the efforts of the online initiatives. When he was named TBO’s general manager in February 1999, he was able to start construction of his vision of a powerfully linked online site. By mid ’99 all the Media General web sites were under the TBO umbrella, and TBO was made a separate division.
The convergence group wants TBO to be an equal player in this new arrangement. But they see it as the weakest leg of the “three-legged stool.” “This is a temporary problem,” says Donna Reed, the Tribune’s managing editor. “They’re in transition with their new system and they don’t have enough people.”
But one positive step for strengthening TBO’s place in the partnership has already been made, says Kirk Read, “We had been next to the business desk in the newspaper. In the new building the content staff is in the TV newsroom where stuff is happening fast, all the time. It’s loud; there is a lot of laughing, lots of energy. TV is about immediacy and urgency; so is online. This change is going to help the product.”
There are still some unknowns that need to be determined. After years of being primarily “shovelware” (an online version of the print product) TBO needs to learn how to become a true 24 / 7 breaking news outlet. And they need to figure out what people who might travel this media bridge really want from the experience.
As Read puts it, “We have such a huge opportunity. We have so many tools, so much support. There are high expectations, we want to exceed those expectations. The newsrooms are excited about how we can take content that wasn’t used and give it new life. Now I wish I knew what makes people need to come to TBO every day, what will delight and inform them, what degree of interactivity do they want. We are neophytes in this. We have much to learn.”
