Fisher Communications, Seattle-based owner of TV and radio stations in the Pacific Northwest, announced this week its launch of 43 hyperlocal neighborhood Web sites in its home market. Fisher’s goal is to create a network of neighborhood sites in Seattle. To populate the site with neighborhood-centric local news, Fisher is reworking content from KOMO TV. This will be complemented by user-generated content and a partnership with Windmere Real Estate.
The service will run on DataSphere Technologies‘ LocalNet, an outsourced solution providing sales, advertising and technology. Fisher already uses DataSphere for local search.
Fisher’s current direction in hyperlocal is a break from an earlier, more ambitious strategy centered on Pegasus News, a full-fledged, city guide level solution that it acquired in July 2007 for $1.5 million. At that time, Fisher also hired Seattle Times Interactive head Nancy Bruner to manage its interactive group.
After running up some operating costs, however, Fisher switched tracks last December and sold Pegasus for what it paid — $1.5 million — to GAP Broadcasting. Bruner departed soon after. Shedding assets and associated operating costs such as Pegasus News have apparently helped Fisher manage through tough times.
Meanwhile, Pegasus’ new owner, GAP Broadcasting, a radio station group with mid-sized properties in the Gulf and the Pacific Northwest, has put Pegasus, along with $aveOnTheLot.com, an auto vertical, into Archstream Media. The new division will initially provide services to its own stations. Eventually, the plan is to also provide the community and auto services to third parties.
Rick Ducey is the managing director for BIA/Kelsey. He is an expert in digital media innovations, competitive strategies, new product development and new business models, including digital ecosystem collaboration strategies.
Ducey oversees the firm's consulting, research and advisory services areas. He is also the program director for BIA/Kelsey's Video Local Media advisory service. This program provides coverage and analysis of how online, mobile and broadcast video technologies, competition, shifting consumer demographics and media usage trends are driving changes in the media ecosystem and SMBs and other advertisers can be successful in the new environment. Ducey assists clients with their business planning and revenue models, strategic research, market assessment, and designing and implementing digital strategies. He is also a cofounder of SpectraRep, one of BIA�s companies, which sells a patent-pending IP-based alerting system that he co-invented.
Prior to joining BIA in 2000, Ducey was senior vice president of NAB's Research and Information Group. In this position, he was in charge of the association�s new technology assessment, audience and policy research, strategic planning and information systems, including all Internet operations, and he also developed publications and seminars.
Before joining NAB in 1983, Ducey was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University where he taught and did research in the areas of emerging telecommunication technologies and strategic market research. He also served on the graduate management faculties of George Mason University and George Washington University in telecommunications management and the University of Maryland, where he taught strategic market management and research methodologies. Ducey was selected as the Spring 2011 Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University where he teaches entrepreneurship in new media. He has published a number of research articles and papers in these areas and serves on editorial boards of leading scholarly journals in the communications field. He has also worked at radio stations WSOQ-AM/WEZG-FM and Upstate Cablevision in North Syracuse, New York.
Ducey received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, M.S. from Syracuse University and B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
