South Florida CEO: Stay tuned: WFOR sits atop the ratings heap thanks to a strong lineup from CBS, b

* For years, chronically low ratings made WFOR-TV a running joke in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale television market. Cartoons that ran on competing channels against the station's early evening news regularly pulled in more viewers. Five years and several course corrections later, the Miami-based station is ahead of the pack.

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When Michael Colleran became general manager of WFOR a year and a half ago, the CBS television affiliate, which is seen on Channel 4 in Miami, was well into its recovery. The 59-year-old kept the momentum going by hiring new on-air and behind-the-camera talent as well as ramping up the station's marketing.

During sweeps weeks this year--the major ones are during February, May and November--WFOR sat atop the ratings for the important late night and noon news categories, according to New York-based Nielson Media Research. The station tied with longtime market leader WSVN for overall daily ratings among English-language stations.

Colleran declined to take credit for the ratings boosts, saying instead that over a long period of time the station's programming, news, engineering and marketing departments "worked together for us to be successful." Chief among the architects of that success was news director Shannon High-Bassalik, who joined WFOR when it was near the bottom of the ratings. "In the early news-casts. 'The Simpsons' were beating us," Bassalik recalls.

Former WFOR general manager Steve Mauldin, who was instrumental in wresting ratings winner "The Oprah Winfrey Show" away from local ABC affiliate WPLG, hired Bassalik. In 2003, Mauldin was tapped by the station's parent company, New York-based Viacom Television Stations Group, to oversee four Texas stations. Colleran came onboard shortly afterward.

"Over the first half of the year this marketplace has done well," Colleran says. "This will be a good year for the triopoly." The triopoly is the group of three stations Colleran runs in South Florida: WFOR; UPN affiliate WBFS, on Channel 33 in Miami; and WTVX, which airs UPN and WB programming on Channel 34 in West Palm Beach. All three are owned by Viacom and are managed from WFOR's headquarters in Miami.

Colleran says overall sales this year were expected to be six to 10 percent higher than in 2003. So far "we're outpacing that," he says. Viacom prohibits him from discussing the profitability of the stations, he says, but Chantilly, Va.-based media consultancy BIA Financial Network Inc. estimates the CBS affiliate alone booked $70 million in sales last year, compared to $68 million in 2002.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale media market is large, ranking No. 17 in the nation with 1.5 million television households. In 2003, that translated to $478 million in total market advertising revenue. BIA vice president Mark Fratrick estimates advertising revenue will jump to $526 million this year because of spending by political campaigns.

Colleran says his plan is to continue to deliver consistently strong programming and that profits will follow.

"In our business they're coming over the hill after you every day of the week," he says. "If you change strategy every day you'll be out of business at the end of the year--so you have to have a strategy you can stay with."

Still, for affiliates, the network determines a significant portion of the programming. For the past several years, that has worked in Colleran's favor. CBS is at the top of the ratings heap, with prime time hits such as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Survivor," and "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Tracy Letize, program director for all three South Florida stations, says she would "like to take credit for it, but we're lucky. We have a great lineup. We have the No. 1 shows in prime time."

Michele Cohen, an associate media buyer at Boston-based communications and advertising firm Hill Holliday, says she looks for the Top 20 markets when she places advertisers such as Dunkin' Donuts, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, "and a lot of them are on CBS. It's considered a 'must buy' now."

A station's local programming choices still do make an impact on the bottom line. Syndicated hits such as "Oprah" bring with them a flood of viewers. This fall, Letize is gambling on a new morning talk show, hosted by Los Angeles-based libertarian author and radio host Larry Elder, and an "Entertainment Tonight" spin-off called "Inside." Strong shows, she says, have "a halo effect" on the shows that follow them. That is why many stations devote so many resources to building up their newscasts.

"We're a big-time news operation," Colleran says. "There are very few television stations in the country that do seven-and-a-half hours of local news in a day."

Home-town on-air talent is a big piece of WFOR's strategy. Miami-raised media veterans Eliott Rodriguez and Maggie Rodriguez are the station's top news anchors, and Colleran hired well-known anchor Robb Hanrahan too. The station recently swiped reporter Brian Andrews and news anchor Beatriz Canals from rival WSVN, though the two will not be on the air until their non-compete clauses lapse later this year.

Bassalik says the new hires were "a big financial commitment. Five years ago we wouldn't have even been able to hire them. We were so low in the ratings they wouldn't have come."

If ratings are any indication, so far Colleran's strategy seems to be working. One small wrinkle may be money he left on the table when he chose not to renew the contract to broadcast Miami Heat basketball games. Colleran says, "it was not financially prudent to continue the relationship. We had them for three years. During that time the team was not doing well and the ratings we estimated were off by over 40 percent. Sales suffered accordingly."

The Heat signed with another local station. Sunshine Network. Enter uber star Shaquille O'Neal, who joined the Heat roster this summer, and whose appeal is expected to boost game viewership significantly. Cathy Weeden, general manager of Sunshine Network, says the station's new contract was negotiated long before O'Neal came aboard. "We really look smart now, right?" Weeden says. "It will certainly mean higher [advertiser] rates."

If Colleran is chagrined, he does not show it. "Woe is me," he says. "If we had known Shaq was going to play on the team we may have had a different view of continuing our relationship with the Heat. Hindsight is 20-20."