Category: Local Businesses, News || By

The parent company of the Tribune-Review and a string of suburban papers could build a $75 million printing plant in the city.

Several informed sources have told the Almanac that executives from the Tribune-Review Publishing Co., which last year purchased the Daily News, have been scouting locations for a new printing facility.

Both the city and sites near Monroeville have reportedly been under consideration, those sources said.

The proposed plant would replace the presses at the McKeesport paper as well as those at the Valley Independent in Monessen and the Monroeville-based Gateway Newspapers, which include the Norwin Star and Woodland Area Progress.

According to reports, Mayor Jim Brewster also recently gave the Trib's publisher, businessman/philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, a tour of the city.

Tim Schooley of the Pittsburgh Business Times has confirmed the rumors and put both the Trib and the city on the record.

Trib CEO Ralph Martin tells Schooley the company has maxed out its printing operations and has been forced to turn down commercial printing jobs.

Besides its own newspapers, the company also prints USA Today, the Pittsburgh Catholic, the New Pittsburgh Courier and other publications under contract.

The new facility would consolidate four older plants. No layoffs are expected, Schooley writes; instead, press workers would transfer to the new plant.

Bids from vendors are expected by July, according to the PBT.

Martin tells the Business Times that McKeesport is under consideration because it isn't obstructed by tunnels, and because space is available in the Regional Industrial Development Corp. business park on the former U.S. Steel National Works site.

The Trib's 10-year-old NewsWorks facility, which prints the Pittsburgh edition of the Tribune-Review as well as other publications, is already located in an RIDC industrial park in Marshall Township.

. . .

In Other News: One of the two radio stations licensed to McKeesport is for sale.

Tom Taylor of Radio-Info.com reported this week that WEDO (810) has been listed with a Chicago-based broker, Media Services Group, for $1.75 million.

The station was placed into an irrevocable trust several years ago by its owner, Judith Baron of Florida, who inherited the station from her late husband, Ralph.

Ralph Baron and other investors purchased WEDO in the 1970s from city businessman Ed Hirshberg.

WEDO, which has studios in White Oak and a transmitter in North Versailles Township, is a 1,000-watt daytime-only AM station. It broadcasts a mix of ethnic and religious programs, paid infomercials and nostalgia shows.

The asking price of $1.75 million may be overly optimistic; WEDO has never appeared in the ratings in recent memory.

And as Taylor notes, Baron's decision to sell WEDO comes as the market for radio stations has bottomed out.

With radio audiences declining and fewer than two out of 10 listeners currently using the AM band, the most likely scenario would be for WEDO to be sold to a national religious broadcaster or one of several low-budget "networks" that run schedules of nothing but paid programming.

Such was the fate of the former WLOA (1550), which is licensed to Braddock. After a community development group and two entrepreneurs were unable to make the station a success, it was sold to Greenwich, Conn., based Lifestyle Talk Radio. The network's schedule is heavy with paid programming.

Another station with local ties was sold to an all-Catholic religious broadcasting network; Carnegie-based WZUM (1590), which has a studio on Buttermilk Hollow Road in West Mifflin, experimented with talk and oldies before being taken over by Wisconsin-based Relevant Radio.

The other radio station licensed to McKeesport --- WPTT (1360) --- is owned by Pittsburgh's Renda Broadcasting Corp.

Although it still has a nighttime transmitter site in Lincoln Borough, WPTT's studio is located in Green Tree and the station has a pending application to change its city of license to Mt. Lebanon.

(Editor's Note: Portions of the WEDO story were originally published at Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online.)