RTNDA: Thriving in an on-demand world

Cory Bergman October 25th, 2006

Written by Chip Mahaney at the RTNDA technology event in New York: One of the biggest challenges (and opportunities too) for traditional news organizations is going from a linear (newscast) mindset to a mindset that’s totally non-linear. The final session of the day featured digital news executives from ABC, CBS, CNN and FOX talking about the challenges their organizations are facing in a world that no longer relies on television for the bulk of its news, and what strategies they’re counting on to grow their brand in the years ahead. Transcript follows…

Transcript by Chip Mahaney, KDFW/Dallas, chip@smartbusy.tv

Moderator: Max Robins, Broadcasting and Cable

Panelists:
• Michael Clemente, Executive Producer, ABC News Digital
• Susan Grant, Executive Vice President, CNN News Services
• Jonathan Leess, President/GM, CBS Television Stations Digital Media
• Ron Stitt, Vice President, Digital Media and Internet Operations, FOX Television Stations

What is the Greatest Opportunity, or Most Under-Utilized Opportunity for News Operations now?

Michael: Turning anyone in the world who’s interested in being a journalist. Without the anonymity allowed in this space, then matched with Brian (an established reporter), the Foley story might not have broken so quickly. People are feeling empowered to be part of a 2-way conversation now.

Susan: How we can expand the use of the video content we have. Six months ago, it was more “what’s left on the cutting-room floor”. We’re only at the beginning of it. It goes beyond organizing our video and being able to search for it, to creating new communities. Take story-telling components on air, and marry it to online. Now we’re dealing with consumers directly – listening to them. Better conversations internally. We’re exploring stories differently. Using online for context. We’re at the beginning to Chapter 2, all the things we can do with the content we’re creating and gathering. Taking advantage of the content we’re creating and gathering, participating with the consumer.

Ron: User-generated content. Media being a conversation. I don’t think we need to be afraid of the long-tail of media. I wish my producers would spend more time looking at Hitbox, looking at what viewers are looking at, responding to, rather than internal conversations about what we should be doing. There is the legitimate issue of not wanting to pander to the audience, of course.

Jonathan: We can’t lose sight of the fact we’re still a traditional media business, at the local and national level. We still produce content in a linear fashion. The biggest challenge is converting our mindset from linear to on-demand, and that challenge is so exciting. It’s a milestone for a local news operation to publish a new story at 2pm rather than hold it to 5pm. Hitbox: most NDs and GMs didn’t know about this two years ago. Real-time feedback, who’s going where. Unique users and demos. It’s all here, but it’s years away from going mainstream in traditional media outlets. It’s the traditional media that needs to convert.

Max: We are in 24/7 world, a news cycle that doesn’t stop.

Michael: All these operations are set up to do television. Built around talking, but the web needs less face and more text. That’s a big change. What we’ve done is using Hitbox tool, minute-by-minute. A good example is 2 Barbara Walters segments. Two years ago, we did Tatum O’Neal for 10 minutes. Barbara and her unit were resistant to putting it out on the web earlier in the week, on Monday. But they did, and John McEnroe responded to her allegations by mid-week. That led to a bigger buzz for the segment Friday night. Demonstrate the content, and that will feed on itself.

Susan: CNN has been in a 24/7 culture forever. CNN.com competed with the CNN-air. Our challenge was not in combining the physical space (not possible because of size), but to combine web and TV into a holistic operation. Changing the focus inside the newsroom. Getting one star to start a blog, now everyone wants to have their own blog.

Ron: It comes from the top. The examples that the NDs or the GMs set. In NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace, so we’re taking it seriously. If the management is sending the message that “getting the show on tonight is all that really counts”, then you’re going to have a problem.

What we’re seeing in the FOX station group is the cultural change is happening much more quickly than we anticipated.

Michael: Same with ABC. When we said we’d be putting Desperate Housewives on the web, that sent a signal.

Jonathan: We’ve been fortunate to start from the top. It started there. We had to travel around the entire country, visit all our stations, spent 6-8 hours, to incorporate them into what this is about. The conversion method was something we had to teach them. It took us a good year to succeed with the conversion. We have some stations doing a terrific job, but some that are still lagging along. Some of those stations are doing very well in their TV market. Our first effort launched June of 2005. We finished O&O stations by December 2005. We have every one of our stations now breaking news online, and now waiting until 5pm. They have to get it out there, or someone else will break the story.

Max: TVNewser.com – One kid, 21 years old, Brian from Towson Maryland, has made this his business.

Michael: Last week when George S. interviewed the President, we put up a solicitation to “ask the President a question”. There are levels of citizen journalism. Floaters (surfing only), swimmers (limited participation – asking a question, web poll), divers (significant participation – shooting video).

Jonathan – we have spikes on weather days that blow News away. It will dwarf a day’s news. We have great investments in that.

Ron: There are a lot of threats to traditional media out there. I don’t think citizen journalism is a threat to the news business. It will transform what you do in many ways though.

Susan: They want to participate in the news, and we want to include them. Only a couple of years we were talking about news as a commodity. They want to know where news is coming from.

Ron: We need to pay attention to RSS so we’ll be considered the source.

Susan: re: CNN Pipeline. Once you get it, you understand what the product is, and you use it. Price is not a barrier to entry.

Multiple platforms for our content?

Michael: Right now at ABC, first up will still be the television product and the affiliates and that has everything to do with our relationship to the stations. We put out a 15-minute webcast at 3:00 in the afternoon. That’s part of the reason we took “Tonight” out of “World News”. If people want to watch in a linear fashion, they’ll probably watch TV.

What’s the mood with affiliates?

Jonathan: The linear programming approach of streaming a show for 30 minutes is just taking advantage of technology. It doesn’t change the way the viewers experience the news. As we archive and digitize everything we have, you’ll see more of a focus on “bits and pieces”. The consumer is conditioned differently, not wanting to sit through a 30-minute newscast. In this newscast, the consumer wants pieces, not necessarily the sum.

We have a world of clutter. I have 800 channels on my television. I have on-demand, and I have an hour. What am I using? Comcast and our 11pm news being offered for the next 24-hour cycle – they’ll view it on demand. No numbers, too early to tell if it’s a success.

Ron: We have to customize the experience for each medium. It’s more than live-streaming, with the exception of breaking news.

What’s coming up with being able to customize my news content?

Michael: In the next year, it’s coming. Apple is working that way with a box that connects your PC to your TV. Intel. When I read about what’s going on in Asia and Europe.

Jonathan: Like you heard in the Lost Remote session, video search is going to be a big deal. Video and audio tagging.

FOXNews just gave reporters and producers video phones.
Are we going to be able to say good-bye to those big satellite trucks?

Not anytime soon. We’re waiting to feel as comfortable with 3G technologies for transmitting video as we are with our current satellite technology.

Transitioning your brand to these new platforms.

Ron: You may be surprised to hear this. May not believe me. myFOXlocal or myNetworkTV has nothing to do with mySpace, except to perhaps crystallize some thinking that was already there. We didn’t set out to create a local brand because of the mySpace purchase. We’re looking for contextual opportunities to tie in.

Jonathan: Our mission statement when we started this project was a branding proposition. The first thing we decided to do two years ago – the homepage was all about the brand of the station, the anchors. But in the online, on-demand world, this is not what the user is looking for. We use the term “always on” to say we’re not just a newscast. We’re converting our newsrooms into always-on, 24/7. We have online news teams working 24/7. How a consumer consumes and identifies with the brand, we use our channel number and call letters, but over the next few years, that may change. Relevance and credibility are the most important things to our news sites.

Susan: Pipeline is “live”. Up until June 2005, the video on Pipeline was behind a pay-wall. I used to think we were electrocuting our customers. Once bandwidth dropped in cost, we made it free again. We had to reinvent an ad sales web force. On September 11th, we used the Pipeline service to replay the coverage of 9/11 five years before.

It fuels the spirit of working with our television journalists, and trying to figure out the new paradigm of what this is all about.

Michael: Even though we have 40-50 fresh clips on the site, people are still reading text. The brand has to live on its own. When you think of ABCNews, I don’t think people understand how wide a variance between PrimeTimeLive and 20/20 and Nightline. People say they want WorldNews, but when they dive in to the site, they want those wild stories on another show.

Ron: Strange news.

Michael: It’s like the Sunday news. People skim the headlines, and then go to the sections that interest them (automotive, travel).

What about YouTube? Do you mind seeing your content on their site?

Michael: We usually let them play it. We’ve had people steal ABC News Now, and we’ll call them and have them take that down. With all the success of YouTube, who knows where it’s going? 80% of the traffic is overseas, and none of it is monetized. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Jonathan: I used to work with ABC, and the Imagineering Group that designs all the rides in the park. The first thinking was to let the park designers design the paths, but the real lesson is letting the consumers make their own paths, and then make it easier for them to get from place to place.

Susan: There’s not just one entity. There’s no single news viewer. There’s a lurker, floater. Some people follow stories or topics. Some people laterally navigate through pages. Some people want to customize their sites. Some people don’t want to customize anything. Some people want a Darfur story; others want the chicken chasing the truck. The stories in demand change throughout the day.

Michael: A lot of people will come in for the eye candy, and will stay for more serious content.

Ron: The post Gen-X people have a completely different understanding of the media. We need to focus on some of the younger people in our businesses. Some may need to be fast-tracked in order to help us grow our businesses.

Question: What are we to teach up and coming news professionals?

Michael: Multi-tasking. Writing. So many people coming through today can’t string three sentences together.

What is the most unexpected success on your website?

Jonathan: One of the things demanded from our users is photos … slideshows. Not just our photos or screen-grabs, but their photos too. Bad weather, newsroom will turn it around quickly and put it on the web.

Susan: CNNMoney.com … photos in gallery format, Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. No video, just a slideshow. Very sticky.

Also podcasting. We had a radio network so that was a natural. Podcasting allowed us to be more creative.

Michael: World News webcast getting 2,000,000 – 2,500,000 downloads a week. Also, a story on our site “Rise of India” – a top story for 3-4 months because it got linked in India. Also, during Katrina, because we’re on AOL for news in Europe, that got a lot of clicks.

Ron: I have been surprised by how interested the audience is in our people. Something that hasn’t worked … I haven’t seen any interest in people being able to create their own playlists.

Question: If we’re supposed to be the buffet of news in our markets, how do we pay for that?

Michael: On a bland, bland day, you might not get any value. But when there’s news, it’s amazing how quickly people gravitate to our site. There may be days or weeks when not much going on. It’s no different from the newsstand 30 years ago (Time, Life and 3 other choices), but now there’s all kinds of choices just in the People category (Us, In Touch). On shopping sites, there are places where you can vote on a product. We need something like this with facts. On TV, global-warming is a dud, but online people are really engaged in this story.

Susan: The implication at first was this wasn’t a business, but it is a business, and it’s growing. This is an engaged consumer, which is a valuable commodity for an advertiser. We have an international edition and a national edition. Most of our “international edition” viewers are from the US. Most people have a preference to go to one site first, but they go to many of them. We need to know a little bit of who’s coming and what they’re looking for.

Michael: The dollars may not be growing, but they are shifting.

What do the advertisers want?

Ron: There are two groups of advertisers here. One just wants impressions – that’s a commodity. Another group wants to be showcased. What I want to avoid is a situation where we boil it down to a process, pushing out sausages. There’s no more important thing that happens at a local or national website, how you write the headline. Those are critical components that differentiate you and decide whether you’re successful.