Any time a TV station moves the dial and goes from third to first in the news ratings, that’s a story. “In terms of total news viewers we have gone from worst to first in six years,” says Gene Steinberg, general manager of KMIZ, the ABC affiliate in Columbia, Mo., owned by the News-Press & […]
Any time a TV station moves the dial and goes from third to first in the news ratings, that’s a story.
“In terms of total news viewers we have gone from worst to first in six years,” says Gene Steinberg, general manager of KMIZ, the ABC affiliate in Columbia, Mo., owned by the News-Press & Gazette Co.
“We won the newscast battle in July.”
In July, 2014, 43 % of news viewers in Mid-Missouri watched KMIZ news. In July, 2008, that percentage was only 28. According to Steinberg, the turn-around started when the station teamed up with the research-based strategic consulting firm, Frank N. Magid Associates.
Naturally, the first order of business was research.
“We needed to find out what the audience wants and needs were and where each station was succeeding or not,” says Magid consultant Pat Maday.
The initial research (to date, there have been five research projects in seven and a half years) was “clear that this market had a big appetite for news and weather,” says Maday, who added that the research also revealed that KMIZ’s competitors “were not necessarily delivering on audience needs and wants.”
According to Maday, the station used the research to “craft a plan, building their brand around the wants and needs of the audience and then executing it.”
This approach, creating what Maday calls “a new essence,” takes focus and discipline.
“It takes a lot of discipline,” says Curtis Varns, KMIZ’s news director, “because you have to define yourself by who you aren’t as well as who you are.”
So what is KMIZ’s brand?
“What people want,” Steinberg says, “is news of the day and a high commitment to weather, told in a straight-forward manner.” KMIZ tries to do special reports all year, Steinberg adds, especially “enterprise stories not found on the police scanner.”
Varns describes KMIZ’s news coverage as a “lot of hard news, investigative and enterprise reporting, breaking news and severe weather that might jeopardize or risk viewers’ personal safety.”
Maday says the “key qualities are important hard news and weather, and enterprise stories no one else has.”
Varns says it’s simply “no-nonsense news.”
Over the years, the station made some upgrades in presentation with a new set, new graphics, even a new announcer.
“Adding the announcer [Charlie Van Dyke] that does the top station in the No. 1 market,” says Steinberg, “went a long way to sending the message that we were serious about news.”
Varns points to practicing good journalism as the reason for the station’s success in recruiting news viewers. “Digging deeper, having contacts and systems in place at the courthouse and at the police department.”
Varns says recent stories about a one-man crime wave on the University of Missouri campus and another about a class of 72 elementary students made to stand outside as punishment when the heat index was over 100 were the result of “working smarter, taking the time to piece together the data and following up on tips from the public.”
Maday says that talent in medium and smaller markets come and go, and that a brand focused on news content can help smaller markets “weather talent changes really well, and even help guide talent decisions by hiring the right people who can do their brand.”
“In the ever-changing media landscape, it’s hard to keep the ratings you have,” Steinberg says, “and growing them is even harder. I’m proud of what we are doing.”
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