Tribune TICking Upward

While its newspapers are undergoing heavy downsizing, Tribune is adding substantial staff and content at Fox affiliate WTIC Hartford. The station plans to add 20-25 bodies over the next year, reports HartfordBusiness.com, is doubling the length of its morning show, and is adding an 11 p.m. news to pair with its 10 p. 

The station is also kicking around the notion of a noon and 5 p.m. news, says general manager Richard Graziano, and will increasingly collaborate with the Hartford Courant paper, which just made major cuts last week.  

“We do feel we can enter a growth phase.,” he said. “We hope to have strong support from advertisers. It’s on me, so if it doesn’t work out, they’ll probably be someone else in my position a year from now.”

Needless to stay, the upsizing runs counter to what the rest of the broadcasting world is doing, which has increasingly become the Tribune way. 

The Hartford market, DMA #28, is dominated by Meredith, LIN and NBC, though the latter has had WVIT on the market since March as it focuses on top ten markets.