Media in Atlanta

As of 2011, metro Atlanta is the ninth-largest media market in the United States. Due to apparent over-estimates of population growth in the 2000s by the U.S. Census Bureau, this rank is a decrease from two years prior as a result of the 2010 U.S. Census.

In 2009, metro Atlanta was the eighth- or seventh-largest market, with over 2.3 million TV households and 4.3 million people aged 12+. According to Nielsen Media Research, it ranked eighth in television broadcasting, having recently slightly surpassed the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and not far behind the South Florida metropolitan area). According to Arbitron, it ranked seventh in radio broadcasting, now just ahead of the Philadelphia metropolitan area and not far behind the greater Houston/Galveston metropolitan area.[1]

Cox Enterprises, a privately held company controlled by siblings Barbara Cox Anthony and Anne Cox Chambers, has substantial media holdings in and beyond Atlanta. Its Cox Communications division is the nation's third largest cable television service provider;[2] the company also publishes over a dozen daily newspapers in the United States, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. WSB AM, the flagship station of Cox Radio, was the first broadcast station in the South.

Television

The Atlanta metro area is served by many local television stations, and is the eighth-largest Nielsen designated market area (DMA) in the U.S. with 2,310,490 homes (2.0% of the total U.S.).[3]

Cable/satellite networks

Atlanta is a major cable television programming center. Ted Turner began the Turner Broadcasting System (now merged with Time Warner media empire) in Atlanta, where he bought a UHF station that eventually became TBS. Turner established the headquarters of the Cable News Network at CNN Center, adjacent today to Centennial Olympic Park. As his company grew, its other channels – the Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TNT, Turner South, Turner Classic Movies, CNN International, CNN en Español, CNN Headline News, and CNN Airport Network – centered their operations in Atlanta as well (Turner South has since been sold). Also now fully part of Turner is truTV. The Weather Channel, owned by Landmark Communications until it was purchased by NBCUniversal, Bain Capital, and The Blackstone Group in September 2008, has its offices in the nearby Cumberland/Galleria edge city. The first nationwide music video programming on cable television, Video Concert Hall, a precursor to MTV, was created in Atlanta.[4]

Local stations

The Atlanta area has 13 full-power TV stations, running a total of 27 TV channels from 27 TV networks and local sources. Over-the-air digital subchannels are shown as subitems, the main channel is always on the x.1 subchannel and is or was simulcast on analog (over-the-air and cable). Cable listings are shown for Comcast, the dominant local broadband TV provider. For digital cable, three-digit whole numbers are for set-top box users, while decimal numbers are in-the-clear (non-encrypted) QAM for cable-ready ATSC tuners, and have occasionally been changed. These numbers are the physical RF TV channels and the transport stream identifier (TSID) as they are transmitted from the headend, however some are mapped with PSIP to have the same number as over the air. For HDTV stations, an SDTV version (often a separate feed) is mapped on set-top boxes to the original analog cable channel number. Since March 16, 2009, all Atlanta TV stations that air local news are now in HD, with WXIA 11 first, then WSB 2, followed by WGCL 46, and WAGA 5 last.

As of April 2013, the following stations and channels are seen in the area (network O&O's are indicated in bold):

Channel Callsign Affiliation Branding Subchannels Owner
(Virtual) Channel Programming
2.1 WSB ABC Channel 2 2.2
2.3		 Me-TV
Laff		 Cox Television
5.1 WAGA Fox Fox 5 Atlanta 5.2
5.3		 Movies!
Buzzr		 Fox Television Stations
8.1 WGTV PBS GPB 8.2
8.3
8.4		 GPB Kids (mostly PBS Kids)
GPB Create
GPB Knowledge (mostly PBS World)		 Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission
11.1 WXIA NBC 11 Alive 11.2
11.3		 WeatherNation TV
The Justice Network		 Gannett Company
14.1 WPXA ION Ion Television 14.2
14.3
14.4		 qubo
Ion Life
Shop TV		 Ion Media Networks
17.1 WPCH Independent Peachtree TV Turner Broadcasting System / Time Warner (LMA by Meredith Corp.)
30.1 WPBA PBS PBA Atlanta Atlanta Board of Education
34.1 WUVG Univision Univision 34 Atlanta 34.2
34.3
34.4		 UniMás
GetTV
Escape		 Univision Communications
36.1 WATL MyNetworkTV theATL 36.2
36.3		 Bounce TV
Antenna TV		 Gannett Company
46.1 WGCL CBS CBS46 46.2
46.3		 Cozi TV
Grit		 Meredith Corp.
57.1 WATC Independent Atlanta's TV 57 57.2 WATCTOO Community Television
63.1 WHSG TBN TBN 63.2
63.3
63.4
63.5		 The Church Channel
JUCE TV / Smile of a Child TV
Enlace
TBN Salsa		 Trinity Broadcasting Network
69.1 WUPA The CW Atlanta's CW 69 69.2 Decades CBS Corporation

LPTV stations

Several LPTV stations cover smaller parts of the metro area:

Surprisingly, LPTV channels 4, 47.1, 47.2, 47.3, and 53.1 are also carried on Comcast digital cable (on 249, 18 [1018 HD], 389, 390, and 263 for former Wometco systems), even in the most limited basic service tier, even though must-carry does not apply to LPTV stations. Charter carres 4, 32.10, 47.1, and 47.2 on 210, 85/224, 102, and 24. Even more unusually, channel 4 is also carried on DirecTV.

Cable-only stations

Radio

There are also numerous local radio stations serving every genre of music, sports, and talk radio. The nationally syndicated Neal Boortz and Clark Howard shows are broadcast from Atlanta radio station WSB AM 750. Atlanta is also where Sean Hannity and Ryan Seacrest got their starts—Hannity filling Boortz's seat at WGST AM 640, and Seacrest as a radio personality at WSTR FM 94.1. Other notable radio personalities have included Leslie Fram and Elvis Duran (both now in New York), Rhubarb Jones, and voice talent George Lowe. Familiar Atlanta Braves announcers have included Skip Caray, Larry Munson, Don Sutton, and Pete van Wieren.

Cox Enterprises, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV/FM/AM, is headquartered in Atlanta. Cumulus Media engages in the acquisition, operation, and development of commercial radio stations in mid-size radio markets in the United States and is also headquartered in Atlanta. As of the end of 2005, it owned and operated 307 radio stations in 61 mid-sized U.S. media markets and a multimarket network of five radio stations in the English-speaking Caribbean.[6]

Stations in grey are considered "rimshots", normally reaching only part of the metro area clearly.

AM stations

In addition, several other smaller stations serve the suburbs.

FM stations

 

WUBL FM 94.9 and WSB-FM 98.5 are the primary entry points to the state of Georgia Emergency Alert System, taking emergency messages from the governor of Georgia, GEMA, or U.S. president, and relaying them to all other stations across the state.

WFSH-FM carries a Christmas music format from just before Thanksgiving until Christmas Day. Since 2011, WVFJ-FM also does so, with WSB-FM dropping it a couple of years later. In adjacent areas, WSRM 94.5 Coosa does the same in northwest Georgia.

Internet

Four local college radio stations operate on Internet radio and other means of distribution:

Newspapers

The major daily paper in Atlanta is The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Several alternative weekly publications are also distributed, including Creative Loafing, The Sunday Paper and the Atlanta Nation. A monthly newsprint publication Stomp and Stammer features local music news, indie rock record reviews, and cultural commentary.

As of November 2010, the following newspapers are published in Atlanta:

Suburban newspapers include:

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

In its history, Atlanta has had many other daily and weekly newspapers, starting with its first weekly, The Luminary (1846), and its first daily, the Daily Intelligencer (1849).

Online-only newspapers

Magazines

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Arbitron Radio Market Rankings - Fall 2011". Arbitron.com. 2009-10-14. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
  2. ↑ "About Cox". Cox Communications, Inc. Retrieved 2007-08-22.
  3. ↑ "Nielsen Reports 1.3% increase in U.S. Television Households for the 2007-2008 Season." Nielsen Media Research. (September 22, 2007) Retrieved on April 29, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Entertainment and performing arts". AtlantaMaps.net. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
  5. ↑ Archived February 19, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ CMLS:Profile for Cumulus Media Inc. Yahoo! Finance
  7. ↑ "Top 10 Georgia Daily Newspapers". Cision. August 1, 2012. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  8. ↑ Association of Alternative News Media
  9. ↑ Moore, L. Hugh, The Georgia Review, Volume XIX, Number 2, Summer 1965, p. 176

External links

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