At AR&D we are great believers in the power of social media.   I have been working with a number of client TV stations on ways to integrate viewer tweets, emails and blogs into their newscasts.    For a couple years I have also been urging my clients to ask for, and use local pictures and video in their weathercasts.    They don’t just use them on stormy days, but instead integrate them into their daily weathercasts to help tell the weather story of the day.   This has also paid off with exclusive video and pictures of breaking news.

We have learned some interesting things along the way.   It is no surprise, for instance, that the more you use viewer-contributed pictures, and give them credit in the newscast – the more pictures you get from them and others.   We’ve also now added phone calls to those contributors so they can describe what we see in their pictures during storms and other news events.

When we started out to create special local newscasts that interact with viewers on all levels of the social media revolution, we based them loosely on the cable news channel programs that show viewer chat and comments throughout the show.   It now becomes apparent that TV viewers draw a big distinction between those cable programs and their local news.

When it comes to local TV newscasts viewers want the strong emphasis on NEWS not social commentary.    Now, they want to participate in many cases, and are interested in what others have to say – but in short doses – that do not interfere with your delivery of the local news.    While viewer comments rolling along on the bottom of the screen may be very acceptable in Rick Sanchez’ program – local TV newscast viewers find it to be a distraction from the main mission – clearly delivering the local news of the day that affects them.

So, we have changed the emphasis in those newscasts from putting up comments on a number of stories  and scrolling many comments on the bottom of the screen – to finding one or two of the most important, controversial, or interesting stories of the day – and asking viewers to weigh in with their feelings and comments.    Those comments are then sprinkled throughout the newscast, and of course, all the comments are posted on the station’s website.

This seems to be a better balance and helps you avoid at all costs the biggest mistake you can make – asking for comments on stories no one cares about just to fill a slot or two in the newscast.   That, I believe, is a surefire way to send viewers to the remote control.

I also urge you to have your anchors engage viewers on Twitter, Face Book, via email and text messages, or by blogging every day leading up to your newscasts.   This is the new – more powerful way – to topically promote your newscast – by having your anchors talk about important news of the day viewers can see on your newscast.   With afternoon TV viewing close to hash marks in many cases, traditional topical marketing has become nearly worthless.  It is time for you to move in a new direction.

Jim

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.