By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A shakeup in local media as the St. Joseph News Press announces it has reached a partnership agreement with KQTV.
The News Press and Gazette Company has announced the partnership with Heartland Media is effective today. The partnership will combine broadcast news resources under the KQ2 Hometown News brand under a Shared Services Agreement.
“Our goal is to be smarter about how we cover the community,” Rall Bradley, Executive Vice President of Broadcast at NPG, said in a statement. “By bringing together our teams, we can deliver deeper, more consistent local coverage while ensuring that every story adds something new to the conversation.”
The News Press reports current KQTV Vice President and General Manager, Dirk Allsbury, will oversee the combined broadcast team. The News Press reports the partnership will extend to select content sharing between KQTV and the News-Press and Gazette newspaper.
Stacey Hill with NPG will lead the company’s work in print and online, stating the partnership will include “joint reporting projects when those opportunities arise.”
Though the combined newsroom will begin operating out of the KQTV offices at 4000 Faraon Street in St. Joseph, it eventually will move into the NPG headquarters at 825 Edmond Street.
NPG Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Bradley shared his thoughts on the partnership in a special News-Press and Gazette column entitled Changing Times.
“This shared service agreement combines the resources of both operations, allowing us to deliver more complete and comprehensive coverage of our area.
At the same time, the St. Joseph News-Press will continue to operate independently in its print and digital forms. Our newspaper staff remains dedicated to bringing you strictly local information that’s best presented through those formats.”
The St. Joseph News Press had sought to buy KQTV several years ago, but the tentative $13.6 million deal was called off in October of 2019 for unspecified reasons. The pending sale of the St. Joseph television station to the corporation which owns the St. Joseph News-Press was announced in April of that year.
The Radio and Television Business Report suggested at the time a court ruling might have played a major role in scuttling the deal. The trade publication says the proposed sale to KQTV to the News-Press & Gazette Company was one of the biggest transactions following a November 2017 vote by the Federal Communications Committee eliminating cross-ownership rules for newspapers and broadcast media, such as radio and television.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FCC and told the agency to reconsider its rule, stating the FCC didn’t take into account how the change would affect minority ownership of broadcast media.
Heartland Media acquired KQTV from Nexstar Media Group in 2016 in a five-station transaction, reportedly worth $115 million.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ
