Media General has been on a buying spree of sorts, having snatched up more than $1 billion in acquisitions over the past few years. The Southeast media conglomerate now publishes 29 daily newspapers, including The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Tampa Tribune, along with 100 other weeklies and periodicals. Media General also owns 26 television stations, two Virginia cable companies, a financial services subsidiary, and a partridge in a pear tree. The company recently bought Park Acquisitions, a deal that gives Media General control over an additional 10 television stations and 110 daily and weekly newspapers. March 2000 also saw the acquisition of Spartan Communications, gaining control of 12 more TV stations.

Richmond roots

Media General's roots lay within The Times-Dispatch, its flagship paper. In 1879, Joseph Bryant, whose family has long owned the Richmond newspaper, bought The Richmond Times, which was merged with the The Richmond Dispatch eight years later. The Bryant family created Media General in 1969 as a holding company for its properties in Florida and Virginia. The company dove into the broadcast market during the 1980s when it purchased several television stations in Florida and South Carolina. Now Media General is also the nation's largest manufacturer of recycled newspaper print.

Let's make money, shall we?

After years of buying anything it could get his hands on, Media General has spent the 1990s working to make those properties profitable. After purchasing Park Acquisitions in 1997, Media General picked up the Potomac News, and invested $4.5 million for a stake in Hoovers Online. Like other media giants, the company is jostling for a strong position in the telecommunications and information bonanzas following Congress' deregulation of the industry in 1996. To that end, Media General is pursuing a strategy of consolidation and encouraging closer cooperation between its media holdings. Helping the cause is competitor Thomson Corp., who sold Media General five dailies and six weeklies in the Southeast and helped MG to merge some of its television stations with its print publications. Media General also hopes to begin converting its television stations to digital technology.

Joining the New Media trend

In order to compete in the new media sector, Media General's Financial Services unit (MGFS) - which maintains databases of financial and technical information on major industries, markets, and publicly traded companies - has moved online. Thus, in addition to hard-copy reporting, the unit offers its research on CD-ROMs and through various online outlets. In March 1998, the division introduced a web-based "Financial Sidebar" service that feeds financial information and graphics to the business pages of online and hard copy newspapers.