Hearst-Argyle Television achieved meaningful ratings success, with 17 of the Company’s 18 stations that serve top-50 markets outperforming the national prime-time ratings of their respective networks.

At the core of Hearst-Argyle’s long-term, multi-platform success is its stations’ ability to deliver powerful local content through a wide array of new technology channels.

The evolution from analog to digital high-definition television (HDTV) offers consumers a breathtaking consumer electronics experience—and Hearst-Argyle is leading the way. The Company has partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) to educate the public about HDTV’s “D-Day,” coming February 18, 2009, when America’s broadcasters make the technical transition. In 2007, Hearst-Argyle was the first to launch local HD news programming in Sacramento, Boston and Kansas City, and concluded the year with a full-scale launch in Orlando. Each station upgraded its technical facilities and news studios to deliver a stunning visual experience.

In Kansas City, KMBC’s new 52,000-square-foot HD broadcast facility is a model of cutting-edge news and TV production technology. Its September grand opening was marked by two days of live-from-Kansas City “World News Tonight” national broadcasts with ABC’s Charles Gibson. Hearst-Argyle also modernized its broadcast facilities in Baltimore; Fort Smith, Ark.; and at its newly located Washington, D.C., news bureau. Hearst-Argyle stations continued to excel in the business of local video content. In an unprecedented ratings achievement for a single broadcast group, three of the Company’s affiliates swept the top three spots among ABC stations in prime-time audience delivery during a major sweeps period. Three others rounded out the top 10. WKCF-TV in Orlando was the nation’s top CW affiliate in prime time.

In the highly competitive local TV news race, Hearst-Argyle stations generally ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in their respective markets. Ten of them led every local newscast time period in overall ratings during a major sweeps period. KCCI-TV in Des Moines consistently achieved the highest late-news ratings of any station in the top 100 markets.

Dynamic local content and coverage earned Hearst-Argyle a number of accolades in 2007, including a total of 39 regional and national Edward R. Murrow Awards—WBAL-AM, Baltimore, with two national Murrows; and one each for WCVB-TV, Boston, and KCCI-TV. KMBC-TV captured seven regional Murrows, more than any other TV station in America. WBAL-AM received 11 regional Murrows, more than any other radio station. Hearst-Argyle captured its fourth consecutive Walter Cronkite Award as a national broadcast group, in recognition of excellence in political journalism. WGAL-TV in Lancaster-Harrisburg, Pa., and WBAL-TV also earned individual Cronkite awards. WLKY-TV, Louisville, led the industry with the NAB’s Service to America Award, which recognizes a single U.S. TV station for its efforts in serving its community.

According to Barrett, the Group made dramatic strides in developing, displaying and distributing content by leveraging its strengths in local news, weather and sports. Its political reporting, under the Commitment 2008 banner, spawned multiple innovations, including new outreach efforts to engage younger voters. WMUR-TV’s coverage of the New Hampshire primary included co-hosting with CNN the first TV debates of the 2008 presidential season in June. The station featured live Web streaming and real-time-response online polling. WMUR also teamed with Gather.com for a blogger competition tied to the CNN debates. KCCI-TV served as the source for C-SPAN’s Iowa caucus coverage and worked with Hearst-Argyle’s Washington, D.C., bureau to provide extensive political coverage for the entire station group.

Weather and sports continued to be top local audience draws. Hearst-Argyle has launched 16 digital TV channels providing up-to-the-minute local weather information 24/7. They include 10 Weather Plus channels in the station group’s NBC markets. Weather Plus, developed by Hearst-Argyle and NBC, is now a branded source of weather information on major cable systems and the Web (weatherplus.com), and is coming soon to mobile screens.

In sports, Hearst-Argyle is blitzing the competition with unmatched hometown team coverage. WBAL-AM is now Baltimore’s radio home of Ravens football, while many of the Company’s TV stations host coveted NFL pre-season games, including KQCA-TV, Sacramento (Oakland Raiders) and WCVB-TV (New England Patriots).

Hearst-Argyle launched an ambitious multimedia platform, High School Playbook(highschoolplaybook.com), in 2007 to deliver more local sports content to a larger audience. High School Playbook brought together local content from seven Hearst-Argyle markets. The site covers men’s and women’s sports with user-generated content, as well as video from station videographers and specially trained high school “sideline reporters” using HD cameras.

Original programming at Hearst-Argyle stations was equally innovative in 2007. “Conversations with Carlos Watson,” a national award-winning quarterly prime-time show, debuted on all 29 Hearst-Argyle stations, featuring interviews with personalities spanning national politics, entertainment, sports and human interest. More than 6 million viewers have seen the shows—rivaling prime-time audiences for national cable news networks.

Strengthening the reach of local content and coverage was key to Hearst-Argyle’s strategic expansion of its distribution platforms. The Group finalized agreements with cable TV distributor Cox Communications and emerging fiber-optic distributor AT&T to distribute group-generated content in multiple markets. Hearst-Argyle and its partners at Internet Broadcasting (IB) struck a content-sharing, cross-promotion agreement with CNN.com, an alliance that quickly accelerated user traffic to all the Web sites.

The exciting results of Hearst-Argyle’s multi-platform activities in 2007 can be seen in the numbers generated by its online content and partnerships. Nearly 15 million average monthly unique visitors (UVs) went to the 30-plus Hearst-Argyle Web sites, 12 of which are mobile-enabled. Together they aggregated more than 1.7 billion page views (PVs). A total of 5.5 billion PVs resulted from nearly 48 million average monthly UVs throughout the network of sites—including Hearst-Argyle sites—assembled by IB; Hearst-Argyle is IB’s primary equity investor.

Hearst-Argyle also became the first independent TV station group to strike a content- and revenue-sharing relationship with YouTube. The Group has since launched nearly 30 partner channels on YouTube. By year’s end, Hearst-Argyle had attracted more than 20 million video views, dramatically increasing the visibility of its content.