WDRB

WVUE, Gray’s Fox affiliate in New Orleans, took a tongue in cheek approach to its Super Bowl Sunday strategy with a series of promos for its 10 o’clock news. “We went hyper local,” said Blaine Strawn, WVUE’s marketing director. “Granted, most viewers outside of New Orleans won’t understand, but we knew our viewers would.”

“Rather than just one promo,” said Scott Brady, WDRB’s creative services VP, “we launched a whole new news campaign. This was a half-day of tremendous viewing sampling with much of our competitors’ audience tuning in as well! The Strategy was Super Bowl Sunday rather than just the Big Game Ad.”

Scott Brady, the creative services director for WDRB, faced a difficult marketing dilemma in September. He had to promote the station’s new 5 o’clock newscast without mentioning the name or showing the face of one of the newscast’s anchors.

With the addition of WDRB News@5, WDRB will produce 9.5 hours of local news on weekdays, and 64 hours of local news a week. “We will be adding six to eight new people, taking our newsroom to over 100 people, the largest television, radio or newspaper newsroom in Kentucky,” said Bill Lamb, WDRB’s general manager.

President Trump’s attacks on the news media spurred the RTDNA to ask its members to run editorials stressing the importance of a free press. While many newspapers took up the cry, only a handful of TV stations did. Here why some that did felt the need to go public and what their viewers thought of it.