Newspapers? Remember Them?

For many years, Northeast Ohio broadcasters have gone without newspaper siblings locally.

The last such pairing (newspaper/TV division) was shuttered in the early 1980s, when the E.W. Scripps-founded Cleveland Press (originally the “Penny Press”) was sold off by the media company that still bears its founder’s name.

The only broadcast/newspaper pairing left is in Elyria, where Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting still owns talk WEOL/930 and its sister stations in the Sandusky area – WKFM/96.1 Huron, WLKR-FM/95.3 and WLKR/1510 Norwalk. The stations are still co-owned with the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and the Medina Gazette. ELB sold Cleveland-market WNWV/107.3 Elyria to Akron’s Rubber City Radio Group a ways back.

This week, all Cleveland TV stations that had distant newspaper sisters are shedding those newspapers.

We already noted the move by the aforementioned Scripps, which owns ABC affiliate WEWS/5 in Cleveland. It’s merging with Milwaukee-based Journal and putting both company’s newspapers into a new company.

Tribune, which recently purchased Cleveland Fox affiliate WJW/8, had been signaling a similar move for months…and officially spun off its newspapers this week.

And now the third shoe has dropped, with NBC affiliate WKYC/3 owner Gannett announcing yet another broadcast-digital/newspaper split. The only difference in Gannett’s move? The newspaper side will keep the Gannett name, with the broadcast-digital side taking an as of yet unannounced name.

The fourth major network affiliate in the Cleveland market, CBS affiliate WOIO/19 (and its MyNetwork TV sister WUAB/43), is owned by Raycom Media. As far as we can tell, it has no newspaper assets.

What does this all mean?

In Cleveland, probably not much. It could be assumed that shedding print assets will make all three group owners stronger, and in some cases, shed some debt from the broadcast side of the ledger.

There aren’t undone broadcast/newspaper synergies here…unlike in Milwaukee, where the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel will be split from NBC affiliate WTMJ/4 and news/talk WTMJ/620 (and an FM adult hits sister station).

Gannett is making a bigger digital play. It’s been a joint venture co-owner with others in Cars.com, and will pay $2.5 billion to take over the entire site.

But all three groups have tried various local and national digital strategies.

In the end, the moves by Scripps, Tribune and Gannett mean that whatever happens to their historic print operations, it’ll happen separate from the broadcast and digital side…