How will Belo spinoff change environment for Houston public relations and Dallas public relations?
Belo Corp. announced this week that it plans to spin off its newspaper business to create separate television and newspaper companies. The public relations communities in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio are working to get their arms around what this might mean in terms of the company’s commitment to maintaining viable news gathering operations in its Texas markets. In addition to media properties throughout the United States, Belo owns The Dallas Morning News, which is the ninth largest daily in America, WFAA-TV, Texas Cable News, Al Dia and Denton Record-Chronicle in the Dallas area, KHOU-TV in Houston, KENS-TV and KCWX-TV in San Antonio and KVUE-TV in Austin. Like other integrated media companies, the financial underperformance of Belo’s newspapers has been an ongoing concern and undoubtedly is the driving force in today’s announcement. In its Q2 financial report in August, Belo reported its newspaper revenues had slumped 8.5 percent on slumping real estate, retail display, h
