"When I saw the story ..."

"I realized he needed to see a doctor...

"A brand new newscast with you in mind ..."

PROMAX Award-winning Promos:
The Keys To Attracting Viewers

VOLUME 18, NUMBER 29 JULY 20, 1998

A promo designed to attract women viewers to its 5 p.m. newscast won a New England Emmy for WTNH-TV, New Haven, in May, 1998.

Not long after that, the station just won a PROMAX Gold Medallion in the category of Episodic Television Announcement News for "True Colors," a spot which promoted "an eye-opening series on Connecticut race relations."

Here are details of this station's successful promotion strategies and techniques.

News and Promotion must cooperate fully
for your news to succeed
"Promotion is ultra-critical these days, as broadcasters see the declining ratings and audience share," says Paul Spingola, Creative Services Director of WTNH-TV, New Haven.

Delivering vital and interesting local news and information is the one unique service hometown television stations can provide viewers. "The way to get people into the local news is promotion," he says.

Spingola and News Director Billy Otwell were part of a seminar at PROMAX on improving the relationship between News and Promotion.

The first thing they asked was how many people in the audience had a promotion producer attend the news meetings.
Only about half the hands went up.
He feels this must be improved.

Spingola believes the promotion people must have a full and precise understanding of what News is doing. "Like any other product, you must know what your product is before you can promote it," he says.

One successful technique is to have a promotion producer attend news meetings. "Having a promotion producer in the meeting is the best way to know what is going on on a daily basis, and to know what your product is all about. The producer can listen to what the stories are and decide which are the most promotable," he says.

Promotion created a spot boosting their new 5 p.m.

When the news managers re-formated the five o'clock show, it was targeted to women, the primary available audience. They needed a vehicle to explain the change and the strengths of the new show.

"We produced a spot where we took three subject matters that we thought would interest women, and highlighted three women talking about a particular segment of the newscast that appeals to them," he explains. The segments were health, consumer and general news of interest to a mother on-the-go.

The spot ran in September of 1997, when WTNH unveiled the new format. It was very successful.

"In a situation like this, a spot isn't going to necessarily drive ratings. What it does is drives sampling," Spingola explains. "In the first few months when the spot ran, we had some terrific days where the samples were extremely high," he says.
"A spot like this is designed to promote awareness that we changed the format and had re-focused directly for women. The spot was very effective in that capacity. It drove very strong sampling in the two months that it ran," he says.

Promos increased viewer interest for news series

The episodic spot that just won the PROMAX award promoted a news series called "True Colors," which focused on race relations. The reporter took two college age interns, who were equal in most respects --- the only real difference being that one was black and one was white. "The reporter put them in situations that were equivalent, in order to gauge the reactions of other individuals in the situations," Spingola explains.

"It was quite interesting. In one, they were taken to downtown Hartford. Both were supposed to walk up to people, ask for one dollar, and say they were late for a class at the University of Hartford. They were to say they just needed to borrow a dollar to get on a bus to get to class," he says. It took the black man two or three hours to get the dollar, and the white man only a few minutes.

Next, two females applied for a waitress job. "There was a sign on a restaurant that said, 'Waitresses wanted.' Both women had the same credentials. The black woman was told they weren't hiring for three months, and that they leave the sign up all the time so prospective applicants come in. The white woman was told she could start within a day or two," he says. The promotional spot for the two men took the approach: two students, same situation, wait until you see what happens.

"In this case, we were working with a very difficult situation. You have to hone it down to 30 seconds, sort of explain it, and get people to watch at the same time," he says.

It was a sensitive topic that had to be handled carefully. "Some promotion producers fall into the trap of being overly sensitive so that they don't properly tease viewers to get them to watch the program, because they are too worried about the reaction they may or may not get for a particular spot," Spingola says.

"Every news story could be potentially offensive to a certain audience. As long as you handle it properly, you can promote just about anything. It's all in how you do it," he says. "Obviously, this type of story raises a lot of emotion among viewers and they all want to say something. We had so many phone calls that a week later, we did a viewer call-in show on our LMA television station," he explains. They re-ran the series and gave people a chance to voice their opinions about it.

Over-selling cheats the viewer, hurts the station

Striking a balance so that someone is stimulated to watch, but so that it doesn't become "TV hype," is sometimes difficult. But it's not impossible, says Spingola.
Story selection is key. "First of all, you must have a good story. If you don't have a good story, you can have the greatest promotion in the world, but if you burn people one time, they are not coming back," he warns.
"You must realize that you are going into it with the idea of making a long- term investment with your viewers. You don't just want them tonight, you want them the next night and forever. You can't over-promise. You must accurately reflect the story," he says.
"To simply go out and blatantly over-sell a product you know isn't going to deliver is flat out wrong," he stresses. Not only is it a disservice to your viewers, it will drive people away. "At this station, we are adamant about it. The promotion must accurately reflect the story, and not over-sell the story," says Spingola.

Make sure your writing style isn't hurting you.

All these have been over-used: "Startling!" "Exclusive!" "Dramatic!" "Surprising!"
"The viewer is very savvy. When you do research it is clear that viewers are aware of sweeps periods and things of that nature," he says.

In focus groups, when asked what a sweeps period is, people will actually say, "That's when the stations do all that sensational promotion." "To underestimate your viewers could be a critical mistake. Viewers know that 'exclusive' and words like that are nothing but hype. They have heard them for so long, and have become so de-sensitized to them, that in some cases they almost see it as a joke," he adds.

Promote the story concept first and gain the viewer's attention.

Some stations use a standard open: "Tonight on XYZ news..." "Immediately, that tells me if I don't watch XYZ news, I'm not interested in what you're going to say. I'm not a typical viewer of XYZ newscast. I always watch ABC news. Right away you told me it was XYZ, and I'm not interested," he says.

"A way to get around that is to get into it with a compelling piece of video. As soon as you have the viewer's attention, you go on to say, 'This is tonight at 11 on XYZ news,'" says Spingola.

Promote to viewers' interests, not necessarily the specific content of the entertainment programs.

Spingola does not try to match the content and tone of the promotion with the program during which it airs. "A story must have the merits to stand on its own, regardless of the lead-in audience. If a story is not compelling enough as a story in and of itself, it is not going to get people to watch, regardless of whether the promotion is geared toward a specific lead-in audience," he says. Spingola points to NYPD Blue as an example of how misleading it can be to try to match the promotion to the audience watching the program during which it airs. "You would think NYPD Blue would be a high male audience. But actually there are more females watching NYPD Blue," he says. People who think the way to go is to do a flashy, action type of spot to get those people into the 11 p.m. news, are simplifying the matter way too much, he warns. "The women 25 to 54 watching NYPD Blue have a multitude of interests. As long as you hit upon one of those interests of the audience that is available, it doesn't really matter that it has nothing to do with cops and robbers," he explains.

Promotion is critical to station survival

"In the days of declining audience, broadcasters need to solidify their position through advertising and promotion. It's a different ballgame today. Now you are not only competing against television stations, you are competing against the Internet and everything else, including cable and movies. All the things you are competing against are much greater than they were two or three years ago," he adds.

See also: Attract viewers with strong teases
Writing effective teases is one of the most important elements in retaining an audience, yet too often these are an afterthought.
If you can't convince viewers to watch, it doesn't matter how good your product is. It is one of the biggest problems facing television news, according to a veteran tease and promotion coach, Graeme Newell.