Hyperlocal key to success on radio and TV
Submitted by rwashburn on Tue, 06/22/2010 - 4:41pm.
Future is hyperlocal: TV and radio broadcasters discuss their success with local broadcast news at the Radio-Television News Directors Association Convention this week in Edmonton.A Victoria TV station has kept the cameras fired up and its staff employed following what its news director calls a "near death experience".
Rob Germain told the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) annual convention in Edmonton that CHEK-TV was only a few hours away from going dark when its employees chipped in to raise 2.5 million dollars to buy the station from Canwest-Global.
Since September of 2009, CHEK-TV has produced live local news programming. Germain says the station has reached the break even point.
Meanwhile CHCH-TV in Hamilton, ON, also slated to be switched off by Canwest-Global, found a buyer at the last hour. Its news director, Mike Katrycz says since going with strictly local news during the day (5:30 am - 7:00 pm) and movies at night, it has increased its audience from 1.5 million viewers to 2.5 million.
But nothing could save CKX-TV in Brandon, MB earlier this year. When its owner, CTV, switched it off, 10 former employees decided to take the news operation online.
Nate Bower of the four-month-old Website, ITVBrandon.com says going "hyper local" with citizen journalists and bloggers, while heavily depending on Twitter and Facebook, has managed to pay the staff and break even financially.
Going "Hyper Local" was also the key to the success of radio stations CHED-AM and INews 880 in Edmonton.
Award winning News Director Bob Layton said news/talk CHED remains the market's share leader while sister station, the 2-year old, all-news "Inews880", is closley connected to the "Inews880.com" website.
Layton told the RTNDA, the station's content is a repetitive, 17 minute "News Wheel" driven by the web site's citizen contributors as well as his own staff (shared with CHED).
The station has a half-dozen "citizen journalists" who are paid 75 dollars a month to file stories and pictures (both vetted and verified by fulltime staff).
"Our news is right here and right now", said Layton. "We don't only use our web site as a storage vault", he added. "It breaks news all the time."
