Oregon Media Insiders

You want to talk about "real" ratings? The ones that count? How about the fact that GDO has consistently beaten KGW head to head in the demos the last few books- despite the last two books where KGW squeeked by in households (.1 at 6am in May?)

KGW pulled the same spin last year when they lost one hour and won another, I believe. I'm pretty sure they averaged the two, and made the same argument.

Here's another fact to consider: KGW suddenly had two or three strong weeks in a row in May, but the trend changed again and KPTV has been mostly winning since then. Face it, it's a horse race. The only difference is KPTV has forced KGW to spend hundreds of thousands of extra dollars in the last five years in a desperate effort to stay competitive -and that doesn't even include the new courthouse square set, etc.

Think about it. If it wasn't for GDO, KGW wouldn't have had to start flying their helicopter in the AM, add reporters, pay extra to steal a reporter, start earlier, duplicate their rundown, etc. And after all that, they can't beat them in the demos and have to mouth off when they finally overtake them in the households a couple of times. What gives?

And as for the salaries- don't be so sure. Granted, there may be some positions where there's a big difference, but the evidence I've seen over the years (friends who have worked at both places) indicates a fairly similar pay scale. In fact, in some cases, KPTV paid more.

So go ahead and break out your checkbooks again. Who knows, you might beat KPTV by .2 next time. It'll be a hell of a million dollar investment.