Cox-owned WSOC in Charlotte, N.C., began an initiative to address issues that “might not be easy and they might not be the happiest, but it is the right thing to do,” says Deirdre Conley, WSOC’s creative services director.
WSOC, Cox’s ABC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C., began an initiative three years ago to address issues in the community that “might not be easy,” says Deirdre Conley, WSOC’s creative services director. “They might not be the happiest, but if this is what is really affecting the community then this is what we need to do, and it is the right thing to do.”
Get Real began before it even had a name.
“We started with a mental health special and just saw an incredible amount of response from viewers,” Conley says. “We had a live phone bank and the phones never stopped ringing, even after the show had gone off the air.”
Other specials addressing affordable housing and race also got great responses, and all of that is how Get Real came to fruition, giving WSOC the chance to take on these risky issues in its news coverage, Conley says.
“Those three have really been big issues here and so we have had multiple shows with the continuation of those conversations and of those issues,” she says.
WSOC’s special programs addressing mental health, homelessness and affordable housing and race relations continue to air two to three times a year, Conley says.
“We put the shows that we do on our OTT platforms as well,” she says.
Those issues of affordable housing, mental health and race surface daily within the newscasts, and those Get Real news stories are also available on digital.
“There are lot of ways that people are able to engage and get this information that they are looking for,” Conley says.
It can sometimes be difficult to provide easy answers to viewers’ inquiries, however.
Conley says the station’s latest special on affordable housing in April 2023 had a phone bank of experts provided by local nonprofits. Some of the volunteers answering the phones had at one time been homeless but had turned their lives around and found a place to live.
They knew the ins and outs of the system and could provide real-world solutions to help callers cut through any red tape.
The station also created resource guides for affordable housing options depending on what area the callers lived in.
In the mental health specials, if some callers were identified as needing help immediately, those callers were switched to mental health professionals who were trained to handle such calls, Conley says.
Those professionals were able to assure the callers that “everything is going to be OK and you need to get help and here is where you can get it,” Conley says.
In the Get Real specials concerning issues of race, the first one in June 2020 was a town hall meeting with community leaders including the police chief to talk about reform, change and how to make the Carolinas more inclusive, Conley says.
After the George Floyd murder and during the trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the station brought together different sections of people, Black and White, in “locations where people feel comfortable,” she says. “It was just a really tense time,” she says. But the station “decided not to back away but have real conversations, giving everyone a chance to give their perspective,” Conley says.
“At the end of the day that is why we are here, to serve them,” she says. “That is why Get Real came about. It’s serving the community. It is our job to make sure that we come to them with resources and ways to help.”
NOTE: On July 13 at 1 p.m. ET., TVNewsCheck will present a Working Lunch Webinar, “Reinventing the Relationship with Local Audiences,” to share more about Get Real and how it has caught on with viewers.
TVNewsCheck Webinar, Reinventing the Relationship with Local Audiences
TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp will also talk with leading TV marketing executives from Graham Media, Gray Television and Tegna about how they are promoting substantive local initiatives designed to engage a larger audience across platforms.
Deirdre Conley, WSOC’s creative services director, is one of the speakers.
“With Promax’s Station Summit on pause for this year, we saw a strong demand among station marketers and creative services directors to convene a discussion around powerful local projects and their creative strategies,” Depp says. “This webinar will tap into substantive initiatives that really deliver on the local value proposition and illuminate how they were built.”
She joins Jim Hays, creative services director, WOIO/WUAB/Telemundo Cleveland; Stephanie Slagle, Graham Media’s VP and chief innovation officer; and Enrico Meyer, director of marketing, KVUE Austin, Texas.
CLICK HERE for more information about the speakers and the webinar.
Market Share will preview the topic presented by Hays in the coming days.
CLICK HERE to see how Graham Media’s station in Detroit launched a Help Desk to provide answers to questions submitted by viewers.
CLICK HERE to see how KVUE’s coverage of Austin’s booming growth is affecting housing pricing and the very identity of the city.
New Jobs Posted To TVNewsCheck
CLICK HERE to see new jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center including openings for two maintenance technicians, local sales manager, digital sales manager, morning news anchor, investigative reporter and meteorologist. Other existing jobs include openings for a director of sales, assistant chief engineer, weather anchor, general manager, account executive, and associate producer for national show.
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