Indiana’s NewsCenter: Reaching Fort Wayne, Detroit, and Beyond

by Lauren Richwine, Communications Specialist

We recently came across an interesting article by Rick Farrant of the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly and thought we’d share. Here in Fort Wayne, we’ve got a long list of reasons we are proud of our news networks. Now we can add one more reason to that list. Indiana’s NewsCenter has become a control hub of sorts for 12 Midwest television stations. One of the stations is located in Detroit and features Fort Wayne on-air personalities. In all, Indiana’s NewsCenter is providing for the six local stations, five stations in Peoria, and the Detroit station.

As a result, the workload has increased for both the on-air and behind-the-cameras staff which has grown from fewer than 100 employees to 130, mainly to maintain the “hub operation”. Melissa Long said she sees the silver lining in the situation despite the heavier work load.

“We started looking at it this way — that it’s good for us to be the station that’s the hub rather than the station that’s being told, ‘Your operations are going someplace else,’” she said.