How Action News Jax Became the #1 Rated News In Jacksonville-FREE READ

By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

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The story of how Action News Jax grew their broadcast ratings from Nov. 2023 to Nov. 2024 includes the return of a familiar face, a return to the brand, adherence to research, an on-going investigation and a few hurricanes.

And at Action News Jax, the broadcast news ratings matter.

“Ratings for us, it’s our daily scorecard,” says Craig Davenport, marketing director at Action News Jax.

Action News Jax, the brand name used for WJAX and WFOX, Cox’s CBS and Fox affiliates in Jacksonville, finished the November 2024 ratings period with the top-rated newscasts at noon, 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m.

“Last November, we had overall 34 share of the market,” says Bob Longo, general manager of WJAX and WFOX. “And this year, we’re a 42 share of the market. Good morale promotes solid teamwork. Solid teamwork ends up with good journalism. It feels good in the building.”

Davenport says news and marketing have meetings daily where they study the ratings.

“We look at impressions every day. We look at demos. We look at households. We look at digital numbers. We still live and die by ratings.”

Davenport says scrutinizing the quarter hour to quarter hour provides feedback that they are giving viewers what they want and “keeps them from flipping around to all of those other options that are out there. It means we’re probably putting together a good newscast that keeps people interested.”

Both Long and Davenport attribute the return of a familiar face to Action News Jax as a key factor in the station’s news ratings.

Jason Balthazar returned to Action News Jax as news director in early 2024. Balthazar was the number two in the Action News Jax newsroom before he went to WFTV, the Cox ABC affiliate in Orlando in 2022. Balthazar has almost 25 years’ experience in various news management roles at WFTV.

Long says the return of Jason Balthazar as news director “got us back to the things that we know work.”

“Jason’s come in and really helped get us back focused on brand,” Davenport says.

Davenport says the Action News Jax brand is based on “what research tells us viewers are looking for in a newscast. It’s not about what we think viewers want. We don’t just throw stuff against the wall and if it sticks, we’ll do it.”

Davenport says the research drivers that have always been successful for Action News Jax are investigative stories, weather and owning the big stories.

“I think the increases we’ve been seeing is because we’re going back to what we used to be,” he says.

One of the investigations the station did was a series of reports on the Jacksonville Transportation Authority over 16 months by Emily Turner, a reporter and anchor at Action News Jax, Balthazar says.

“It was investigative legwork over months and months,” he says. “It was always advancing. She was always able to find a way to push it forward.”

Davenport says longer investigative reporting that’s more in-depth adds value to what they’re delivering to the viewers, “something viewers want more of in their newscast.”

Severe weather and hurricanes threats also helped Action News Jax in the November ratings.

The hurricane threats from Helene in late September and then from Milton two weeks later gave the stations momentum going into November.

“We own weather in this market,” Davenport says. “I do more marketing for weather than anything else because we know how important it is.”

Davenport says during Hurricane Helene and Milton, Action News Jax was on the air continuously for multiple hours.

“We were first ones on and typically the last ones to get off,” he says. “That was a bit of a wave for us and helped carry us into the November sweeps.”

Davenport says viewers wrote in and talked about how important it was that the stations were in continuous live coverage.

“I think that really helped catapult us into the November sweeps,” he says.