Thursday, July 30, 2009

News from the riverfront: WFLA News Channel 8, The Tampa Tribune & TBO.com

One company in the Tampa Bay area offers our 3.5 million residents news and entertainment across all three media platforms: print, broadcast and Internet. The Media General Company, based in Richmond, Virginia, owns one of the Bay area's two morning daily newspapers, The Tampa Tribune, the NBC affiliate station, WFLA News Channel 8, and Web site, TBO.com (Tampa Bay Online). Their headquarters, combining operations for all three media properties, newspaper, television and Internet, are located directly on the Hillsborough River, across from Tampa's business district. Production studios, printing presses, and offices for all their departments are spread out between two large buildings. It's a very picturesque site fronting the river, with views of the bay and port, but the downside is the chance of severe flooding during a hurricane. One computer model (Floridians do spend a good bit of time studying storm and flooding scenarios) shows a twenty-foot wall of water inundating this location and our downtown. The news operation has hurricane/storm contingency plans set and ready to activate so they can move essential services north to the University of South Florida, which is roughly 14-16 miles away from the bay. The University of Tampa campus, which includes the original 1891 Tampa Bay Hotel (where I have featured the building's Moorish architecture and minarets) is immediately north of here along the river. At 8:00PM, when I shot this photo, the river was calm, the sky growing darker as night fell, and the chance of a storm striking the Tampa Bay area was ZERO. I like this building, and have been inside many times. I've even enjoyed social occasions on the rooftop balcony overlooking the river and the city. Let's hope they always print, broadcast and work the Internet from this spot on the Hillsborough River. (Especially the newspaper; I don't want newspapers to stop printing. Ever!)

1 comment:

  1. You have two morning newspapers? Hard to believe in this day and age.

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