It’s a challenge most TV stations face at one time or another. “We want to be the No. 1 morning newscast in Los Angeles,” says Terri Hernandez Rosales, VP of Communications and Community Affairs at KNBC, the NBC-Owned station in LA. The only difference between making your morning news the most watched in market 200 […]
It’s a challenge most TV stations face at one time or another.
“We want to be the No. 1 morning newscast in Los Angeles,” says Terri Hernandez Rosales, VP of Communications and Community Affairs at KNBC, the NBC-Owned station in LA.
The only difference between making your morning news the most watched in market 200 or in market 2 is the scope.
The Los Angeles market is more than 40,000 square miles, according to Rosales. So like trying to eat the proverbial elephant one bite at a time, KNBC is looking to win viewers one neighborhood at a time.
As part of a slow rollout of its campaign, KNBC took to the skies over Southern California’s beaches on Labor Day Weekend to deliver a literal over-the-air-message using old fashioned technology, a static banner towed by a single-engine plane that bobbed and weaved its lazy way up and down the coastline.
“For four days over that weekend, we flew the banner four times a day up and down the beaches,” says Tim Howick, KNBC’s VP of Brand and Promotion. “We had a captive audience that had to look and see what it says.”
Howick estimates the banner was seen by more than 2 million people over the four days.
In addition to the in-the-air-campaign, KNBC is putting its message directly in the hands of potential viewers. The station enlisted several hundred neighborhood coffee shops to serve coffee using a custom sleeve with the new morning talent emblazoned on it.
And this past week, KNBC wrapped two food trucks and took them out to the streets of five different, geo-targeted neighborhoods each morning. The locations were promoted in the morning news and there were live shots showing some of the morning news on-air personalities mixing it up with viewers.
This is a niche, neighborhood approach,” says Rosales. “We have to be bold to differentiate ourselves.”
Howick says the station intends to be out in the community 52 weeks a year.
In addition to adding new talent to its morning news, KNBC built a new set, spruced up the graphics, added more stories and is focusing its content “on things that are important to viewers in the morning” Rosales says.
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