Leading a local media company is not for the faint of heart. Everywhere you look, there is change — technology, regulation, audiences, partners, employees. In these rough seas, we have a light to help guide us through the storm. It is a focus on mission.

Plenty of businesses have written mission statements, but few have the kind of North Star shared by a media company practicing journalism. 

The E.W. Scripps Co. mission statement says, “We do well by doing good — informing, entertaining and engaging the audiences we serve.” Every business decision we make will be better if we keep that mission in mind.

No matter how your company puts it into words your purpose is likely to make your communities better, keep people informed, and hold the powerful accountable. Democracy itself depends on our ability to meet the task. Still, we often lose sight of our purpose in the hustle and bustle.

Also Read: Local News Close-Up: Nashville Newsrooms Catch Their Breath

Clarifying our mission creates a touchstone for better business decisions. At Scripps, we have been evaluating resources at our stations, prioritizing field journalism and increasing our investment in newsgathering. Does that mean we set lofty goals and do not worry about the business fundamentals? The opposite is true. Because we must have margin for the mission, our focus on the bottom line should be relentless. Both cuts and investments can be guided by our “why.” Our station in Nashville invests in investigative journalism. Our chief investigative reporter, Phil Williams, has been honored in recent months with the DuPont Award, the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Lifetime Achievement Award from RTDNA. John Oliver featured him on Last Week Tonight. Phil has reported on everything from lead in drinking water to sexual assault on school buses, but his specialty is government accountability and abuses of power. He recently received an oversized thank you card, signed by local leaders, grateful that he revealed a  candidate’s ties to white supremacists. Both the honors and card confirm that we are helping our neighbors and being true to our mission.

Live Event: Attend The Business of TV News Event in Washington, D.C.

Another key area of our mission-focused investment is literacy for children. Nearly all employees give to our “If You Give a Child a Book …” campaign. The Scripps Howard Fund and our viewers make contributions and the Nashville Predators match our donations. We have given more than 50,000 books to students in high-need schools in Tennessee. It is the first time many of them have owned a book.

In a less traditional example of business decisions guided by mission, WTVF commissioned a downtown Nashville mural called “Embrace.” It features imagery designed to encourage caring and community. NewsChannel 5 describes the mural as a gift to the city we love, and the city has responded. Everyone from ordinary citizens to celebrities has taken and posted photos of the mural. 

Clarity of mission takes more than a mural. It requires living by your touchstones daily and making sure your team does the same. This is a key strategy to attract and maintain a talented team when talent sometimes seems scarce. If you ask people early in their media careers how they chose their path, most will

say they wanted to make a difference. Team members, tenured and new, likely came in the door full of enthusiasm to do work that matters. When we stop pointing out their impact and reminding them of mission, their fire can die out. Station leaders have the power to rekindle that fire, making decisions that support it, and clarifying each person’s role in the team’s highest calling. 

Making It Better 

In Nashville, leaders talk about mission and impact during the hiring process, and keep it front and center in staff meetings and coaching conversations. Not coincidentally, the station’s rate of turnover is low with remarkable tenure in key positions.

No person or business gets it right all the time, but we share a basic desire to leave an imprint, to know we have made things better. When we align our strategies and teams around the importance of our contributions, we will tap into energy that improves our business performance, elevates our work and gives us strength. Nashville’s June Carter Cash was a famously strong woman. When people asked how she was doing, she often replied, “I’m just trying to matter.”

Same here, June. Same here. 

Connie Britton drama Nashville starts on Start TV Network May 3. The musical drama will air in the Monday-Sunday 11 p.m. ET/PT slot. Hayden Panettiere is in the cast with Britton. 

Nashville premiered on ABC in 2012 and shifted to CMT in early 2017. It follows the lives and rivalry of country singers Rayna James (Britton), the reigning “Queen of Country,” and Juliette Barnes (Panettiere), a devious star who challenges Rayna’s position at the top of the charts. The series also stars Charles Esten, Clare Bowen and Chris Carmack. 

Musical guest stars across the show’s six seasons include Steven Tyler, Elton John, Christina Aguilera and Brad Paisley. 

Nashville will lead out of Rizzoli & Isles and will lead into The Good Wife. 

Part of Weigel, multicast network Start TV showcases strong female leading characters. Its shows include Major Crimes, The Closer and Medium. 

Nashville is unique in many ways, but one thing stands out about the TV scene there. The Big Four affiliated stations are all run by women. Lyn Plantinga is the general manager at WTVF, Tracey Rogers is GM at WKRN, Rene LaSpina oversees WSMV and Noreen Parker manages WZTV. 

There’s a tradition of strong female broadcasters in DMA No. 28, including Debbie Turner, who was general manager at WTVF before advancing to a VP role at Scripps, and Deb McDermott, who ran WKRN before moving up to run Young Broadcasting, then Media General. 

“We have a really good camaraderie,” Tracey Rogers, WKRN VP and general manager said. “I like to say we’re frenemies.”

Scripps has CBS affiliate WTVF. Nexstar Media Group owns ABC-aligned WKRN. Meredith holds NBC affiliate WSMV. Sinclair Broadcast Group has Fox affiliate WZTV, MyNetworkTV station WUXP and CW-aligned WNAB. 

Staffers are working remotely as the pandemic persists. Plantinga said a typical July day saw total staffers in the office in the single digits. WKRN had more like a couple dozen on a given day. “We try to keep as many people out as possible,” Rogers said. 

The general managers express something near disbelief in terms of what stations have been able to accomplish from home. “If you’d told me we could do all this remotely, I would’ve said, you’re crazy,” LaSpina said. 

WTVF is a ratings beast. The station has won every newscast in total viewers in a given day close to 1,400 times since the market became metered in 1998, according to Plantinga. WTVF used to celebrate with pizza, but it turned out to be too much pizza — WTVF hit that goal 187 times last year. 

Plantinga described a content strategy that “goes deeper than giving people a report card on COVID numbers. We have to give people solutions.” A lively investigative team, she added, brings “depth and dimension” to NewsChannel 5’s content. 

WTVF won all key news races in May, in both households and viewers 25-54. At 10 p.m., WTVF put up an 8.0 in households, ahead of WKRN’s 3.9, WSMV’s 3.4 and WZTV’s 1.6. WTVF scored a 2.9 in the demo at 10, with WKRN at 1.9, WSMV at 1.2 and WZTV at 0.7. 

Stiff competition brings out the best in everyone. “There’s no such thing as running away with it in Nashville,” said Plantinga. “It’s a market with a lot of high-quality journalism.”

LaSpina turned up at WSMV last year after being general manager at WIVB-WLNO Buffalo. She has big plans for the NBC station. “We’re re-energizing WSMV,” she said. “We’re bringing it back to the leader it was in the community.”

WSMV marks 70 years on air in September. The 11 a.m. show Today in Nashville features music, cooking, authors and other lifestyle fare. “It’s really well done,” LaSpina said. 

WKRN expanded its 11 a.m. news to an hour a couple of years ago. Up against lifestyle stuff, the newscast is taking off. “During COVID, it’s really grown,” Rogers said. “It might be a person’s first news of the day.”

It has been an eventful year in Nashville. In early March, a tornado tore through the market and killed about two dozen residents. “I feel like we’ve been in the path of a lot of craziness since very early March,” Rogers said. 

Nashville, of course, is the Hollywood of country music, but a varied portfolio of businesses, including healthcare and education, have it well-poised to recover once the pandemic clears out. 

The general managers describe a market loaded with energy. Plantinga mentioned “moments of unexpectedly wonderful things” all around the market. 

Rogers departed Nashville in 2000 and returned in 2017. “The growth blew me
away,” she said. “But Nashville still has that positive vibe.”

CMT’s drama series Nashville will end its run with its upcoming sixth season, series officials confirmed Friday.

The county music-themed series, which stars Hayden Panettiere, Clare Bowen and Chris Carmack, premiered its first season on CMT last year after airing its first four seasons on ABC. Its sixth and final season will debut Jan. 4 on CMT, according to series producer Lionsgate.

 “After more than 120 episodes of unforgettable television, we believe that creatively it is time for the series to come to its triumphant close at the end of the upcoming season,” said Kevin Beggs, chairman of the Lionsgate Television Group in a statement. “We’re very proud of our incredibly talented cast and crew, the creative brilliance of our showrunners, and the loyal support of our great partners at CMT, Hulu and ABC Studios.  Most importantly, we owe a special debt of thanks to the Nashville fans who propelled the series to an incredible run.  We owe it to them to make the 6th season the most exciting and memorable of all.”

Nashville is executive produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (Thirtysomething), Steve Buchanan and Callie Khouri, who created the series.

CMT has turned its CMT Music Awards into a three-day party in Nashville, and a record number of sponsors have turned out for the festivities.

The Viacom network has rebranded around “modern country” to attract a more diverse audience and has seen ratings rise with new programming, including the former ABC drama Nashville.

The CMT Music Awards, airing Wednesday night (June 7), is the network’s biggest event. Last year ratings were up 20%, attracting a record 3.6 million total viewers as it aired on CMT, TV Land and Nick at Nite.

“We noticed that our audience has started to grow and we’re bringing in the country music audience. Not only are they coming in, but they’re staying,” said Adam Steingart, senior vice president of integrated marketing for CMT. “We realized this is a great opportunity for us to also grow the size and footprint of what’s going on around our largest tentpole event, the CMT Music Awards.”

One of the priorities for new Viacom CEO Bob Bakish is having its networks create more events in the physical world. At its Movie & TV Awards earlier this year, MTV held a Music & Television Festival, featuring live music, special guests and food outside the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where the awards were telecast. Comedy Central just held its three-day Clusterfest comedy festival in San Francisco, and BET has surrounded its annual award show with the BET Experience.

Related: Viacom’s Bakish Touts Skinny Bundles

“The country audience is an audience that people don’t always pay attention to, but they’re out there and they’re a large number of people who have made it the most popular format in music," Steingart said. "So we wanted to create an experience that can serve those folks. People get to not only interact with the CMT brand but also our sponsors’ brands along the way.”

The expanded CMT Music Awards has attracted a record number of sponsors, which in turn means higher revenue for the event, Steingart said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Fox on Wednesday (Dec. 14) will launch its music-themed series Star, the latest entry in a genre that so far this year has hit several sour notes.

The series, which takes over the prime time timeslot of Fox’s hit music series Empire, will look to strike a chord with viewers who tuned out of several cable-based music shows this year.

After much fanfare and a second season green light, HBO’s Martin Scorsese/Mick Jagger ’70 s executive-produced rock ‘n’ roll drama Vinyl failed to hit with viewers, and was canceled four months after it premiered this past February.

Showtime hoped viewers would dance to the beat of its drama Roadies, which followed the lives of crew members for major performers. But the network canceled the Cameron Crowe-produced show before it opened for a second season.

FX’s Denis Leary-helmed comedy Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll was silenced this past September after two seasons of so-so ratings.

While Empire continues to deliver big ratings for Fox, the task of developing a successful scripted series around the music business is not an exact science, according to Eric Deggans, the media and TV critic for National Public Radio, who is also a musician. While music has broad appeal, Deggans said viewers tend to gravitate to shows that weave music themes into otherwise dramatic, soap opera-esque storylines rather than shows that focus on the nuts and bolts of the music industry itself.

 “I think the way to have a successful show has been shown by Empire and [FX freshman series] Atlanta — you have to figure out ways in which the music is paired with some other attraction so that you get a wide range of viewers,” he said. “When you do feature the music, it has to be strong and authentic.”

Indeed, the Donald Glover-created Atlanta, which focuses on two cousins trying to navigate the ATL’s rap scene, has found an audience. The series’s Sept. 6 premiere drew the network’s second-biggest audience for a series debut, with 3 million viewers. Atlanta has already been renewed for a second season.

CMT is singing the praises of ABC’s cancelled country music-themed Nashville. The cable network will offer an early preview of its season-five premiere on Dec. 15 and  will officially launch the season on Jan. 5.

Star will get its chance to serenade television viewers with the hopes of making beautiful ratings music within a genre that’s delivered mixed results in 2016.

Pictured (from left):Jude Demorest, Ryan Destiny and Brittany O'Grady, the stars of Fox's new series Star, premiering Dec. 14.

WASHINGTON — Comcast has sued the mayor of Nashville, Tenn., the city and its head of public works over what the MSO said was an illegal attempt to move its pole attachments without Comcast's consent.

According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Comcast said Nashville also provided "far less" notice than either federal law or its contract with the city allows. Telco AT&T filed a similar suit last month.

The new ordinance was passed Sept. 20 and subsequently signed by Mayor Megan Barry. The idea behind it is to speed new communications competition, specifically Google Fiber.

The law makes it easier for new pole users to attach their own equipment. But Comcast said the ordinance amounts to unilateral interference with its equipment without its consent and on short notice — 15 days in some cases, 30 in others.

Google Fiber has been getting breaks from cities looking to boost competition to incumbent providers.

Comcast also takes issue with the fact that the ordinance does not allow it to approve the contractors who will move its equipment, so the MSO does not know whether those contractors meet its standards.

“Indeed, the Ordinance allows these encroaching attachers to do so even in cases in which the make-ready work is reasonably expected to cause service outages for Comcast’s customers — and still without Comcast’s consent, still without approved contractors or approved standards, and with the only caveat being that the encroaching attacher must give Comcast 30 rather than 15 days’ notice,” the suit said.

Comcast said the FCC has a comprehensive set of rules governing pole "make ready" processes — including a requirement of at least 60 days notice for “make ready” work and allowing the equipment owner to do that work. Comcast wants the ordinance to be invalidated as conflicting with federal law, and its enforcement to be permanently enjoined.

“From day one, we have been committed to working with local stakeholders on a collaborative solution that improves the pace of broadband deployment in Nashville,” said Comcast of the suit.  “Unfortunately, the City Council has chosen to adopt an ordinance that violates existing FCC rules, creates significant safety concerns and increases the likelihood for service disruptions. We prefer a business-to-business agreement that reduces permitting times, eliminates unnecessary requirements, improves field coordination between parties and speeds up the overall rate of make-ready work. One Touch creates enormous problems for consumers that we cannot let stand, and we have no choice but to pursue legal action that protects our customers and our network.”

In another victory for Google Fiber, Nashville’s Metro Council awarded final approval to a “One Touch Make Ready” rule that Google Fiber said was necessary for it to accelerate its deployment in the city.

Final approval came way Tuesday of a voice vote, according to The Tennessean, noting that Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is expected to sign the bill into law.

“One Touch Make Ready appears to be a common-sense way of speeding up the deployment of high-speed internet throughout Davidson County," Barry said in a statement, per the paper.

The city awarded preliminary approval to those utility pole reform rules earlier this month.

The final approval could set up a legal battle. Area incumbent AT&T has already threatened to file a lawsuit if the ordinance was given the green light and follow legal steps it has already taken in Louisville, Ky., after that city approved similar rules.

Both AT&T and Comcast were disappointed in the result in Nashville, with AT&T arguing to The Tennessean that there are better alternatives than the 'One-Touch' policy, while Comcast adding that it would weigh whether "further proceedings" were necessary.

In a blog posted earlier this month, Chris Levendos, director of national deployment and operations at Google Fiber, outlined the reasons behind Google Fiber’s “incredibly slow progress” there, claiming that that of the 88,000 poles required to attach Google Fiber for its rollout, more than 44,000 will require make ready work, but  just 33 of them have been made ready.

Google Fiber issued this statement following Tuesday’s vote:

"It’s a great day for Nashville. Congratulations to Nashville Metro Council and residents on passing Council Member Davis’ One Touch Make Ready ordinance on its third and final reading. This will allow new entrants like Google Fiber to bring broadband to more Nashvillians efficiently, safely and quickly. We look forward to continuing our work with NES and the local community."

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger initiated coverage of Lionsgate Entertainment with an “outperform” rating and a $48 price target, adding that the motion picture and television producer is a “structural winner,” benefitting from the market turmoil that is hurting traditional TV networks.

In a note to clients, Juenger said the structural changes that are hurting networks are helping studios – as audiences fall, networks commission more original content from studios.

“Studios are nothing more than factories that manufacture a product called ‘Movies’ and ‘TV Shows,’ Juenger wrote. “Those factories are receiving more orders than ever, and there are very few limits to production capacity.”

Juenger’s 12-month price target represents a 43% premium to its Dec. 14 close of $33.47 per share.

Juenger has been critical of the prospects of some content networks which have struggled with slipping ratings, but said Lionsgate has an advantage because it is an independent studio – there is no conflict in selling to networks and SVOD providers alike. Because TV revenue makes up a smaller percentage of total sales than its peers, it has ample room to grow that segment.  

Fueling that optimism are Lionsgate’s movie strategy – it pre-licenses foreign exhibition rights at predetermined prices;  has carved out a position as the “go-to” studio for young adult movies (Hunger Games and Twilight series’) and has a strong TV business.

Juenger wrote the TV business is poised for significant growth in the next few years as it enters first cycle syndication for a number of titles, including ABC hit Nashville and through its Pilgrim Studios investment, which is growing rapidly and gives them a foothold in the reality TV genre.   

Juenger estimates Lionsgate can grow earnings at a 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next three years.