KGW News Channel 8 Announces “Studio On The Square”

KGW NewsChannel 8 announced plans today for a high definition television studio based at Pioneer Courthouse Square. NewsChannel 8′s HD “Studio on the Square” will be adjacent to the Square’s Visitor Information Center in the interior space previously occupied by Powell’s Travel Books. Construction will begin in the coming weeks to ready the Studio for use in summer 2008. NewsChannel 8′s morning and noon newscasts will originate from the studio. The location of the high definition studio will showcase events at the Square in visual detail never seen before.

With only a select number of street level news studios in operation throughout the United States, the “Studio on the Square” captures the recent trend of integrating news and information access with some of the nation’s most distinguished public spaces. Most notably, NBC has demonstrated the success of street level studios with its daily operations at Rockefeller Center and KGW’s parent company, Belo Corp., has recently unveiled its second street level studio at its flagship station in Dallas’s Victory Plaza.

“KGW’s live broadcasts from the heart of downtown Portland will serve as a unique focal point for our thriving urban core,” stated Commissioner Dan Saltzman. “This partnership provides a unique opportunity to showcase Portland’s finest assets while improving the amenities of our City’s Living Room for all who use it.” Pioneer Courthouse Square, a Portland City Park, has repeatedly been recognized as one of the best public spaces in the world for the organization’s on-going efforts to contribute to an active and healthy downtown core. Pioneer Courthouse Square currently hosts more than 9.5 million visitors and 300 diverse programmed event days each year.

KGW NewsChannel 8, through its service of the Portland community for more than 50 years, has long recognized the vitality of Portland’s downtown and the importance of Pioneer Courthouse Square as the heart of the city. “The KGW Studio on the Square is true to our mission of serving the interests of our community by being hyper local and providing robust coverage to our viewers,” said DJ Wilson, KGW’s President and General Manager. “There is no better way to invest in localism than through ‘Portland’s Living Room.’ Many other businesses are stepping up their visibility in the center of the city, and we too feel it is the right time to show our commitment to our thriving downtown.”

NewsChannel 8 has been associated with the Square for more than a decade through the development and support of community programming. KGW helped Portlanders usher in the new Millennium with a live telecast of the only celebration on the west coast, and has continued to support the Tree Lighting Ceremony, Noon Tunes, Flicks on the Bricks, and many other annual citywide events. KGW’s Studio on the Square will serve as a natural extension of the station’s community resources and will enhance coverage of the ‘events of the day’ in the metropolitan core.

Belo
Belo Corp. is one of the nation’s largest media companies with a diversified group of market leading television, newspaper, cable and interactive media assets. A Fortune 1000 company with 7,100 employees and $1.6 billion in annual revenues, Belo operates in some of America’s most dynamic markets in Texas, the Northwest, the Southwest, the Mid-Atlantic and Rhode Island. Belo owns 20 television stations, six of which are in the 15 largest U.S. broadcast markets. The Company also owns or operates six cable news channels and manages one television station through a local marketing agreement. Belo’s daily newspapers are The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA) and the Denton
Record-Chronicle (Denton, TX). The Company also publishes specialty publications targeting young adults, and the fast-growing Hispanic market, including Quick and Al Día in Dallas/Fort Worth, and El D and La Prensa in Riverside. Belo operates more than 30 Web sites associated with its operating companies. Additional information is available at www.belo.com or by contacting Paul Fry, Vice President/Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, at 214-977-6835.