On the back of the success of its ClarksvilleNow digital brand, Saga Communications has announced plans to launch local news outlets at 18 of its clusters around the nation.
The new digital news sites will launch by the end of the second quarter, which is well ahead of its previously scheduled target end-of-calendar-year date.
The company currently has 27 clusters in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. It will soon add Indiana to that list with its purchase of five stations from Neuhoff Media in the Lafayette market.
Saga Communications launched ClarksvilleNow.com in its northern Tennessee cluster in 2010 and will now attempt to replicate its success around the company. The newly added focus comes from ideas implemented when CEO Chris Forgy replaced Ed Christian as the group’s CEO in 2022 after the founder’s death.
“Many of the processes we put in place are just now starting to bear fruit, and are far from reaching mastery maturation stage,” Forgy said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.
“We were a little slower before in adapting to the digital marketplace,” CFO Sam Bush added. “But we’re running at a very fast pace right now and I think you’ll see some very good improvement in 2024.”
On the earnings call, Forgy claimed the company had already garnered $1 million in advertising dollars ahead of the debut, according to Inside Radio.
