At KCCI, CSD Draws On Long And Varied Experience

There are more than 800 commercial TV stations categorized as “news producing” stations in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.

And almost every one of them has a marketing department, an in-house ad agency of creative services personnel  whose job it is to brand, market and advertise the stations’ local news, programming and digital offerings.

Local TV creative services people must have unique and specific skills to be successful.

Depending on their role, they must be good writers, know how to run a video camera, edit video, implement graphic animation software, buy outside media and create and maintain a branding campaign, to name a few skills.

There are no college or university degrees in local TV marketing.

So, where do these people come from?

Many, like Nathan White, creative services director at KCCI, Hearst’s CBS affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa, work their way up from the bottom. They mostly start as writer/producers.

“Actually, my very first job was at WBKO in Bowling Green [Ky.], as a news photographer,” White says of his first job out of college in 2005.

“I wanted to be in the middle of things that were going on,” he says. “That gave me an opportunity to try things out in a small market where there’s a little bit less pressure and you can just experiment.”

A few months later, White jumped to WLKY, the Hearst CBS affil in Louisville, Ky., as a news photographer.

Being a local TV news photographer is a run-and-gun affair, and White worked every shift. After a few years, he wanted to try something new.

There was an opening in creative services at WLKY and the assistant CSD, Deilia Ray Williams, encouraged him to go for it. Williams is currently the marketing director for KHOU, Tegna’s CBS affiliate in Houston.

“I thought this is a chance to write, edit, shoot, combining some skills that I had and allowed me to grow in areas where I needed to grow,” White says.

He started as a topical writer/producer, where many start in local TV news promotion.

After a few years, Paul Chaplin took over as assistant CSD at WLKY, coming over from the Hearst NBC affiliate in Orlando, Fla., WESH.

“He was able to show me different production and writing techniques that just made me a sharper producer,” White says.

Eventually, White started writing the promos for special reports and image campaigns, and his years of experience working in the newsroom came in handy.

“I already had those relationships,” he says. “It was easier for me to walk over to the news director and the assistant news director and show them a script and talk through anything that they thought was missing or how we could better represent the story.”

A relationship with news, mutual respect and an openness to collaborate are fundamental to being successful in local TV creative services.

In 2015, White moved up from being a writer/producer to assistant creative services director at WLKY. While he was still writing and producing, now he was in charge, supervising the staff, which can be daunting. Sometimes there can be a fine line between guidance and control in the creative process. You want creativity but within the framework of your brand.

“It was more a collaborative relationship, not as much of a supervisory one,” he says. “I thought I would have more influence on the overall look and feel of the brand, how that is translated throughout all the campaigns.”

Even as an assistant manager to a group of writer/producers in a station marketing department, you want to encourage your staff to be wildly creative. Then it’s your job to meld that creativity to make sure “that our brand is consistently represented,” he says.

At WLKY, the station had a brand box, White says. “We have latitude within the box, we can move around within the box, but we need to have some clear boundaries of what kind of promotion matches our brand and our station.”

In Louisville, WLKY’s brand was live, local, late breaking, so the imagery in the promos was high energy and impactful music, White says.

“That was all really important because we could understand what the brand was,” he says.

In 2017, White made the leap to being the creative services director at KCCI, Hearst’s CBS in Des Moines.

It was a different station, different market, different competitive situation and a different brand — KCCI has been known since the 1990s as Iowa’s News Leader.

“It is different,” White says. “We are focused on being the station that people turn to whenever there is news happening. We are a trusted source that people have relied on for decades.”

So, how does the tone and style of that brand look compared to what he was used to at WLKY?

“Some extra gravitas maybe,” he says. “We wouldn’t do a promo that is filled with fast cuts and hard hits. That doesn’t speak to our brand as much as something that demonstrates the quality of our storytelling, the depth of our journalism and the consistency at which we deliver.”

Overall, being the creative services director is a chance to partner with other departments to refine and build a station’s brand so consumers will have a familiar experience with our products, White says.

“Creating that viewer experience involves looking at the range of the station’s operation, from how news and programming are produced to how the promotion builds customers’ affinity and trust,” he says. “That’s why a station with the slogan ‘Live. Local. Late Breaking’ presents a different viewer experience from a station that brands itself as ‘Coverage You Can Count On.’”

White says throughout his career, there were always people willing to show him how to get to the next level.

“That has been a tremendous part of it all,” he says.

NOTE: The inspiration for this column came from a post on LinkedIn by White who has an opening at KCCI for an assistant CSD.  In the post, White wrote that, “Being an assistant CSD changed the course of my professional life. Before this, I was a producer with big ideas and skills that I honed for years. In this position, I started to have real influence.”

“I’m looking for the next assistant creative services director at KCCI,” White says. “This is an excellent opportunity to elevate a team of talented and experienced producers who want to learn and grow while gaining knowledge and experience from other leaders across our operation. We would all benefit from fresh perspectives and new ideas. This position is a stepping stone. A successful leader in this role will be prepared to be a CSD.”

CLICK HERE for more specifics and to apply for the position.