WDIV, Graham Media’s NBC affiliate in Detroit, saw that a story on its website about an upcoming bridge opening got tremendous engagement. The station doubled down and sent a crew of three people four hours away to make it a promotable event for its broadcast viewers.
WDIV, Graham Media’s NBC affiliate in Detroit, sent a crew of three people — a reporter, photographer and drone operator — to cover the opeining of a new bridge about four hours north of the city.
It’s not just any bridge, but the world’s longest timber-towered bridge at more than 1,200 feet long and suspended 118 feet above the ground.
Open only to pedestrians, this bridge has a 36-foot glass platform midway for people to see the ground below.
It wasn’t exactly breaking news. But the station thought it was a promotable story, the kind it likes to use to get people to watch their newscasts.
The Skybridge at Boyne Mountain Resort in Northern Michigan, a popular tourist spot, opened in mid-October.
“When we published our initial story on ClickOnDetroit.com about the Skybridge, it had tremendous engagement from our readers,” says Meaghan St. Pierre, WDIV’s senior special projects producer. “We realized we had an opportunity on the broadcast side to let our viewers experience what it’s like to be on the bridge during peak fall color season.”
St. Pierre says the station sent “a fabulous team of people up there. Paula Tutman is an excellent storyteller. Jeff Jewell is a great photographer and Mike Arcilesi is a great drone operator and really does know how to elevate the storytelling. I knew they would do a fantastic job.”
Sending a crew of three with all the necessary equipment to cover a story four hours away takes some commitment and planning.
“Luckily we had a day to go out and survey the area,” Arcilesi says.
“We are able to hatch plans because we were there a day early when stuff was going wrong,” Tutman says. “We were able to adjust because we had already been on the bridge. You can’t really create a plan in a studio for something like this. You have to be on the ground.”
Arcilesi says the only limitation to flying the drone was to stay 50 feet away from the bridge and not go over the bridge if people were on it.
High winds made shooting difficult for both the drone pilot and the photographer on the bridge, Tutman says.
“The bridge sways in the wind,” she says, making it hard for a photographer carrying a 50-pound camera to hold a steady shot. “I want you to imagine being on a sailboat with heavy chop because that is what this bridge is.”
The wind, however, is part of the experience of what it’s like to be on the bridge, St. Pierre says. “Paula took us on that bridge and we experienced it with her and I think that is what helped me get such fabulous television,” she says.
Tutman says her goal was to “tell a story, find interesting people, and make it look fun.”
The day before, WDIV promoted the story “in our early newscasts and then every newscast and digitally,” St. Pierre says.
And the day of the story, throughout the 4, 5 and 6 o’clock newscasts, “the team did weather, live teases and live pictures all the way through until 6:30,” she says. “They provided all this extra content making it an event. We carried it all the way through that 90 minutes.”
”They sent the crews, they gave us the resources, they gave us the time, they gave us the ability to make it successful,” Tutman says.
According to the station, the story did well on WDIV’S social media platforms. Total reach on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram was almost 66,000 with nearly 40,000 plays. Total engagement for all was 2,500.
Tutman says getting the story, creating teases and hitting the deadlines was hard work.
“We stopped for dinner and worked out logistics and mechanics, slept for a few hours and [were] up around 6 the next morning to prepare to be on the mountain Friday morning,” Tutman says.
“We didn’t get back to the studio until close to midnight. If we had to do it over, we wouldn’t change a single thing.”
How well did the story do for broadcast? Any ratings numbers for that?