Dear Courtney Kerr, Pat Smith, Suzie Humphreys, and Lisa Pineiro:
Working with you ladies for the past six months on D: The Broadcast has been a wonderful experience. We’ll never forget our first date at Mercy, in Addison, for that series of on-camera interviews. Your hair was so perfect. The conversation sparkled.
But we’ve been doing some soul-searching. It’s time for us to move on. The last installment of D: The Broadcast will air September 20, as we end our morning-show alliance with London Broadcasting and KTXD.
Please, we want you to know something very important. It’s not you; it us. You are wonderful, talented, beautiful people. You will find the right boyfriend one day and have a happy multimedia collaboration. And we hope to remain friends. If you need someone to talk to on the phone while you’re watching sad movies in bed on a rainy Saturday, we’ll still be there for you. We’ll still retweet you, too. But we think, for the sake of our personal and professional growth, that we need to see other people.
The hard truth is that when we got into this relationship, we had certain expectations about revenue. Those expectations weren’t satisfied. Perhaps that’s because our audience isn’t watching TV at 9 in the morning, which we suspected all along but became more and more convinced of during the six months that we’ve worked together. We’ll be forever grateful for everything you and London Broadcasting taught us about television. We expect to do something in that medium down the road. We feel we know you well enough to say that you won’t be jealous when that time comes.
With fondness and deep respect,
D Magazine
Update (4:14) — The ladies respond here.
Update (5:48) — The official press release after the jump:
KTXD, D MAGAZINE TO END MORNING SHOW ALLIANCE
Local station KTXD and D Magazine will end joint production of D: The Broadcast, which began airing on KTXD in the 9 am timeslot on February, 18, 2013. The agreement will terminate on September 20, 2013.
Phil Hurley, Executive Vice President of London Broadcasting, which owns KTXD, said, “As we expand our station group throughout Texas, our plans are to syndicate the show to all of our markets and appeal to a more diverse female demographic audience. We appreciate D Magazine’s entrepreneurial spirit and their cooperation in launching this successful local morning show here at KTXD in Dallas.”
Wick Allison, chairman of D Magazine Partners, said, “KTXD’s willingness to experiment with us on a D-branded show shows how visionary it is in its approach to local broadcasting. They have big plans for the show that I think will be very successful, but which fall outside our targeted audience. They encouraged us to stick our toe into television, and we’re glad they did. We love the medium, and we think there are great opportunities for expanding our reach in television. We are very grateful to London Broadcasting for expanding our horizons.
London Broadcasting Company is a Dallas-based media company focused on owning and operating Texas media properties. As the largest mid-market broadcaster in Texas, London serves 9.9 million Texans in 3.6 million households, representing 41 percent of the Texas population. It owns stations in Dallas, Tyler, Abilene, Waco, Bryan, San Angelo, Beaumont and Corpus Christi, and is affiliated with all four major networks, Mundo Fox, The CW, ME-TV, and THIS-TV. DFW viewers can tune into KTXD-TV on channel 47 on DISH Network, DIRECTV, and AT&T; channels 24 and 428 on Time warner; channel 18 on Verizon; channel 249 on Comcast Xfinity; and channel 22 on Charter Communications.
D Magazine Partners is Dallas’ leading magazine publisher, custom content provider, and online service. Its flagship publication, D Magazine, was founded in 1974.
