Jacques Natz Joining Hearst-Argyle Television as Director of Digital Media Content

Jacques Natz Joining Hearst-Argyle Television as Director of Digital Media Content

NEW YORK, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Jacques Natz will join Hearst- Argyle Television, Inc. as Director of Digital Media Content. A veteran news director at some of the nation's top television stations, Natz previously was News Director at WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis. The appointment, effective October 2, was announced today by Terry Mackin, Executive Vice President, who heads Hearst-Argyle's digital media initiatives.

In his new role, Natz will oversee digital content for Hearst-Argyle's various digital-media businesses, including the company's local websites and its Weather Plus digital television channels developed in partnership with NBC. Natz will work closely with Hearst-Argyle partner Internet Broadcasting (IB) and the Hearst-Argyle TV station news directors to expand local content on the Company's web sites. He will also lead initiatives to develop non-news content for the web, mobile applications and multicasting.

"Jacques has done significant work that epitomizes our goal of creating additional vertical media such as our digital Weather Plus brand -- news and information that will be available to consumers anytime they want it and anywhere they need it," Mackin said. "This includes multicast networks, web applications, mobile applications and PDAs. Jacques has a reputation as a strategic executive, and his news experience combined with his passion for technology will help our company fully capitalize on its rich local content and help us grow our digital businesses."

"The creation of this digital-content position will expand the expertise available to our stations and will benefit the news executives throughout our group and our corporate office," noted Fred Young, Hearst-Argyle Senior Vice President, News. "Adding Jacques' expertise to our station news services will raise the level of our multi-platform performance."

During his decade at WTHR, Natz oversaw the news department's climb to a consistently rated #1 news operation, earning six national Edward R. Murrow awards and a National Headliner Grand Award for documentary work. He managed the team that provided coverage of numerous major Indiana news stories, including the Colts' run at the Super Bowl, the Pacers' bid for the NBA championship, plus nationally acclaimed investigative efforts including the DuPont-Columbia silver baton recipient "Who's Guarding the Guardians."

Natz also developed and evolved the newsgathering partnership between WTHR and The Indianapolis Star, one of the first such arrangements in the country. Additional initiatives included the launch of WTHR.com and Skytrak Weather Network, a 24/7 local weather channel, which helped position WTHR and WTHR.com as market leaders.

Natz' career began as a news producer for WDIV-TV in Detroit. He held various producing positions at KXTV in Sacramento and in Boston, where he became executive producer at CBS's WBZ-TV. In 1984 he became assistant news director at WMAQ-TV in Chicago. In 1986, he moved to WHDH-TV in Boston where he eventually became Vice President of News. He joined WTHR from KOMO-TV in Seattle, where he was news director from 1992 to 1996. He is an alumnus of the University of Missouri.

"In today's digital universe, Hearst-Argyle is undeniably positioned as a leader," Natz said. "The strength of its television stations across America and its strategic digital partnerships, including Internet Broadcasting, are the foundation for the creation of unique content. I'm excited to work with a talented team of innovators to produce content across all platforms to service the news and information needs of our visitors and viewers."

The "network" of local-TV web sites managed by Internet Broadcasting (IB), in which Hearst-Argyle holds a 38% equity interest, in the first half of 2006 served an average of more than 12 million monthly unique visitors, according to Nielsen NetRatings. The IB sites also served a total of more than 2.5 billion pageviews -- of which the Hearst-Argyle sites accounted for nearly 650 million -- and a monthly average of nearly 12 million video streams, according to WebTrends. IB this year celebrated its tenth anniversary and has grown from serving 11 million page views in all of 1996 to serving nearly 11 million page views per hour in 2006; it consistently ranks #3, behind MSNBC.com and CNN.com, among web news-content providers, and among the top 50 of all web "brands", both per Nielsen NetRatings.

The sites of seven of the 10 largest Hearst-Argyle stations consistently are the #1 TV-station sites in their markets. The Hearst-Argyle sites are also at the leading edge in providing wireless application protocol (WAP) content, podcasts, web-based newscasts, web-based video and blogs in a broad cross-section of markets.

Nine of Hearst-Argyle's 10 NBC stations have launched digital broadcast carriage of Weather Plus, with cable carriage presently available in eight of the markets. Hearst-Argyle's stations in Omaha and Des Moines also have launched digital weather channels.

In addition to its growing stable of internally generated digital-content products and services and its Internet Broadcasting investment, Hearst-Argyle also is an investor in Ripe Digital Entertainment, creator of the rapidly expanding RipeTV short-form programming service available on cable TV and digital platforms.

Last month, Hearst-Argyle announced the addition of Eric Koepele as Director of Digital Media Sales. Koepele, who joined Hearst-Argyle from CNET, is developing revenue channels and opportunities for Hearst-Argyle's burgeoning digital-media business.

About Hearst-Argyle

Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc. owns 25 television stations, and manages an additional three television and two radio stations, in geographically diverse U.S. markets. The Company's television stations reach approximately 18% of U.S. TV households, making it one of America's largest television station groups. Hearst-Argyle owns 12 ABC-affiliated stations, and manages an additional ABC station owned by Hearst Corporation, and is the largest ABC affiliate group. The Company also owns 10 NBC affiliates, and is the second- largest NBC affiliate owner, and owns two CBS affiliates.

Hearst-Argyle also is a leader in the convergence of local broadcast television and the Internet through its partnership with Internet Broadcasting, and in the application of digital broadcast spectrum for new local informational services through its Weather Plus partnership with NBC and various NBC affiliate groups.

Hearst-Argyle is majority owned by Hearst Corporation. Hearst-Argyle Series A Common Stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "HTV." HTV debt is rated investment grade by Moody's (Baa3), Standard & Poor's (BBB-) and Fitch (BBB-), each with a stable outlook. The company's Web address is http://www.hearstargyle.com/.

Source: Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc.

CONTACT: Thomas W. Campo of Hearst-Argyle Television, +1-212-887-6827,
tcampo@hearst.com

Web site: http://www.hearstargyle.com/

-------
Profile: intent