This is the marketing and management section of the case study. It is divided into four sections:

WCCO-TV costs

Web Advertisements

Compare and Contrast

Conclusion

WCCO-TV costs
WCCO-TV generates revenue by selling airtime to advertisers. Two things determine the cost of running an ad on television- time and ratings. During peak hours of television viewing, 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., the cost of commercial time is highest. During these hours, a thirty-second commercial can cost up to $6,000.00. The same commercial would cost only $150.00 for an early morning program. WCCO-TV hires rating firms to survey households in the area, which provides a demographic breakdown of what viewers are watching. The larger the market share a station receives, the more it can charge for an advertising spot. WCCO also conducts some of its own research and it's used to gauge the performance of each property and audience appeal. (Jeanelle Welter personal communication, January 30, 2002).
Although WCCO-TV does generate a sufficient amount of sales by selling airtime to advertisers, they also produce money by selling web space to web advertisers.

Web Advertisements
Channel 4000, WCCO-TV's Web site, has done an excellent job of placing the few advertisements that are found. When someone goes to Channel 4000, they are most likely going there to receive the latest, in-depth, accurate news coverage. It is frustrating to be bombarded with advertisements when you are searching for something on the web. The ads that are found on Channel 4000 are at the bottom and towards the outside of the page. They do not interfere with the news coverage. There were a few ads on the homepage. These consisted of American Express, Infospace, Oprah, and Edina Realty.
A lot of the advertisements that were found on the web site, were labeled as sponsors. For example, by clicking a news story, you are brought to a new page. At the top of that page is a banner ad with the word "SPONSOR:" next to it. By browsing the site, I was able to come to the conclusion that Channel 4000 has a lot of sponsors. Some of these sponsors included servicemagic.com, getsmart.com, Flonase, and a natural de-icer. Obviously Channel 4000 allows a wide variety of ads onto their web site.
According to our textbook, Kaye and Medoff (2001) state that "advertisers are moving quickly to send their messages to the millions of consumers accessing the Net" (pg. 241). I found that because there probably aren't many children logging on to Channel 4000, the ads were centered towards a more mature audience. Kaye and Medoff (2001) also state that "web advertisements can generally be designed and posted within a relatively short time" (pg. 242). I have checked out Channel 4000 numerous times. The advertisements that can be found today have been there since the first time I looked at the site. I found this interesting because it seems to me that if Channel 4000 were allowing more advertisers a spot on their site, WCCO could make more money. Instead of allowing only a couple of different companies to advertise, why not expand the market and therefore demand a higher cost for the space?

Compare and Contrast
Two other Twin Cities stations that compete with WCCO-TV are KARE 11 and KMSP Channel 9. I checked out their Websites just to see what kind of a difference there was in terms of the number and type of advertisements found on the Web site. KARE 11 was easy to check out because they had virtually no advertisements. I was able to locate two ads throughout the entire site. These two were usatoday.com and visi.com. The thing about the KARE 11 web site was that the outside border stayed the same no matter what you clicked on. There were the same advertisements and the same options located on every page.
KMSP Channel 9 however, was a different story. By going to kmsp.com, you are instantly bombarded with advertisements. Although no pop-up ads come at you, there are banner ads everywhere. I found this very distracting. In fact at the very top of the page is an ad for US Bank. It even seems to be overtaking the header of the page. Along the right side of the page, you can find advertisements of everything from carsoup.com to Nestle Tollhouse.
Overall, I thought that KARE 11 did the best job with their advertisements. I am the type of person that will go directly to an advertiser's web site if I want to give them my business. I don't need to see ads everywhere. However, this made me wonder how much money KARE 11 is generating off from marketing and advertising strategies-probably not as much as Channel 4000.

Conclusion
Analyzing a web site like Channel 4000 allows me to realize that a lot of work and strategy goes into determining what type of ads should be placed where. How many ads are too many ads? What types of ads aren't going to drive the audience crazy? There is definitely a formula to what and why web sites are doing what they are doing. Now I understand a little bit more why WCCO-TV didn't want to disclose this information to me. They are constantly fighting to get the most viewers. Letting their secrets out may be have a devastating effect!

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