Cablevision Provides Light at End of 'Newsday' Tunnel

Newsday may be one of many newspapers to do a mass layoff (in its case of 100 people), but, it's one of the few that has articulated a strategy for making it a viable entity going forward, thanks to new owner Cablevision. Today at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, COO Tom Rutledge explained how the unique ménage à trois among Cablevision, Newsday and the Long Island market may make it possible for the newspaper to be resurrected.

Central to Rutledge's strategy is a belief there is something distinct about the Long Island market, and it's got nothing to do with Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco. In fact, he observed that Long Island sees itself as its own entity, while most of the media outlets in its vicinity are focused on New York City. Said Rutledge: " ... our thrust is to make Newsday a local vehicle and to sort of leave our historic mission of being all things to all people and be very local and specific. ... We can provide great news coverage to local communities and do that in a professional way."

From there, the strategy is to leverage the company's massive footprint, to sell subs; over 80 percent of Long Island residents have at least one Cablevision service, including the newspaper. "It's an opportunity for us to serve Long Island better and use our relationships with our video customers and our online customers to sell papers," he said, noting that newspaper subscriptions were up in the third quarter.

And then there's Newsday's digital option. Acknowledging the trend away from print, Rutledge said Cablevision wanted to use the Newsday brand " ... to develop a new electronic form of local news that is Internet-like in its approach but may be different than Internet service in that it is subscriber driven."

What he didn't get into is how Newsday fits in with Cablevision's existing local news services. As any Cablevision subscriber knows, the company spends scads of commercial time promoting the 24-hour local news channels it has in many markets, covering places like Fairfield County, Connecticut and Westchester County, New York. Like Long Island, both counties are overshadowed in most local news coverage by New York City. Cablevision's pitch? That if you subscribe to satellite, or what Cablevision describes as "phone company" television service, you won't get the very local news that the cable operator provides. Owning Newsday, and building it into a digital brand, could enhance that pitch.

Rutledge's plan has its merits, but it wouldn't be easy for other newspapers, under current ownership, to duplicate. There just aren't many major newspapers which are owned by major cable operators with deep databases of subscribers to cross-sell. In addition, there aren't many major newspapers which reach markets that are underserved by most of the media around them. For Newsday's sake, let's hope that Cablevision can save it, but don't look at whatever it does as a blueprint for the future of newspapers.