Bill Binnie's Media Empire

Entrepreneur Bill Binnie is building a media empire in NH and hopes to give WMUR-TV a run for its money. His WBIN-TV launched this past spring after Binnie's company, Carlisle One Media, bought the My Network TV affiliate WZMY in Derry for $9.25 million. Binnie has invested heavily to bring the station up to speed quickly. Within 100 days of the purchase, he completely renovated the studios and updated equipment to broadcast in high definition.

Carlisle One Media is also in the process of acquiring several smaller stations in NH, including TV-13 in Nashua, to expand its reach. For now, WBIN-TV broadcasts to 2.4 million households or about 6 million viewers. And it made a big splash when it partnered with Bloomberg News, The Washington Post, and Dartmouth College to present a major Republican presidential primary debate in NH on Oct. 11.

But that's only a start for Binnie. We are looking at a bunch of radio properties and other television stations in adjoining markets, Binnie says.

Binnie says the station has tripled its staff and is experiencing just over 5 percent growth in sales per month. While most programs are TV reruns, the station will build its local offerings. It's already launched a 30-minute 10 p.m. newscast, and Binnie says he wants to increase that to one hour and add to its local news team.

We will be doing UNH hockey games and local sports. We will be reporting from Concord, he says. We're the only independently owned and managed station in theNew Englandmarket.

Asked why he decided to add a television station to his stable of businesses, Binnie harkens back to his unsuccessful 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate. Running for public office gave me a window into [the local broadcast market]. The media market in New Hampshire has been monopolized and cannibalized by Boston, Maine and Vermont, he says. If [NH] were its own standalone television market, it would be the 44th largest. It's a large market with affluent and well-educated people in it, but we only have one television news station.

Binnie is not deterred taking on a station with a rocky past. While neither predecessor WNDS nor WZMY succeeded, Binnie is confident about WBIN's future. WNDS and WZMY had a ton of debt on the balance sheet. We're financially healthy. We're profitable and we have no debt, he says.

And the station is doing things to stay ahead of the curve. We're actively developing our website and our commitment to new media will be significant in 2012. We went from zero to 5,000 Facebook friends in 90 days, and we expect to double that every 90 days, Binnie says.

While Binnie is proud of what WBIN has accomplished so far, he's taking the long view. It takes time to build programming and develop a bigger sales force. We have a long way to go, he says.