Fort Myers FOX TV Affiliate, WFTX, Signs With Rentrak - Three of the Top Five Southwest Florida TV Stations Now Use Rentrak's TV Service

PORTLAND, Ore., July 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rentrak Corporation (Nasdaq: RENT), the leader in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising and entertainment industries, today announced a partnership with Journal Broadcast Group to provide Rentrak's Station View Essentials service to FOX affiliate WFTX-TV, serving Cape Coral, Fort Myers and Naples, Florida. The agreement demonstrates a growing commitment among station groups and stations to have a new and different TV database currency.  

"Advertisers are requiring a different and better audience measurement capable of reporting not only the size of the audience to local broadcast and cable programming, but also its ability to deliver consumers which represent their true target buyers, not just demographic surrogates," said Steve Walsh, Rentrak's Senior Vice President of Local Market Television Sales.   "StationView Essentials will provide WFTX access to the largest TV viewing database available in order to gain a better, more comprehensive picture of how key local consumer segments interact with television programming."

Rentrak's StationView Essentials service is uniquely equipped to provide a new television database currency using the only fully-integrated system of detailed satellite, telco TV and cable viewing information from millions of televisions nationwide. There are 38 stations in 19 markets currently subscribing to Rentrak's database currency which provides the industry with a clear understanding of the TV viewer through access to Rentrak-proprietary qualitative metrics such as Ad Retention indices, Program "STICKINESS"/Engagement factors and Brand-based Station "Heat Maps" (retail trading area and political district ratings).

"Rentrak represents a measurement tool with its impressive databases of monitored viewing in each market," said Steve Smith, Chairman and CEO of Journal Communications. "We work with our advertisers in every market to structure creative opportunities for them to grow their businesses.  Working with Rentrak gives us another way to help make our stations more effective for our customers."

About Rentrak Corporation

Rentrak Corporation is a global digital media measurement and research company, serving the most recognizable companies in the entertainment industry. With a reach across numerous platforms including box office, home entertainment, video on demand and linear television, broadband and mobile, Rentrak has developed more efficient metrics to be used as alternative currencies for the evaluation and selling of media. Rentrak is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with additional offices worldwide. For more information on any of Rentrak's services, please visit www.rentrak.com.

About Journal Broadcast Group

WFTX-TV is a Journal Broadcast Group station.  Journal Broadcast Group owns and operates 33 radio stations and 13 television stations in 12 states and operates an additional television station under a local marketing agreement. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it is the broadcast business of Journal Communications Inc. (JRN), a diversified media company with operations in publishing, radio and television broadcasting, interactive media and printing services.

SOURCE Rentrak Corporation