WPIX

Stephen Arnold Music picked up four awards — three Gold and one Silver — at the annual Promax Station Summit Awards in Las Vegas.

Here’s a spot from Darcy Stapleford, senior news promotion producer for KSTU, the Scripps Fox affiliate in Salt Lake City. “Our anchor, Kelly Chapman, suggested we shoot our holiday promo at a light display this year,” Stapleford says. “I began to think how colorful lights on long, dark, winter nights is a good comparison to finding love, hope and inspiration during the dark days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

“Since 2017, we’ve been the over the air home to both the Mets and the Yanks,” says Dave McDonald, WPIX’s promotion manager, “so for our seasonal launch campaigns we like to go as big as we can.”

New jobs post to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include openings for a news director, a news digital content manager, and a systems engineer.

“We wanted to be sure we struck the right note given the quality of life and the struggles of so many in the time of Covid,” said Dave McDonald, WPIX’s promotions manager.

If I were marooned on a tropical deserted island, and had good WiFi, I could keep track of what’s happening in cities and towns all across America all the time on Facebook thanks to local TV.

WPIX, Scripps’ CW affiliate in New York City, created a 90-second music image spot as a tribute to first responders, city workers and the courageous healthcare workers by re-working its station anthem, We Are New York’s Very Own.

I follow more than 500 TV stations’ Facebook pages and what I see every day are countless examples of news coverage about the coronavirus. All necessary, all important. But what I want to share are examples of the more practical posts on how to cope with the disruptions, and the measures some are taking to help each other.

It’s the holiday. Time for lots of TV stations to create holiday promos. Got a holiday promo or campaign you want to share, please let me know.

When you think about it, few careers demand you be creative every day as much as being in the marketing department of a TV station. So how do local TV creative services directors and marketing managers keep themselves and their staff from getting burned out, stuck? That was the mission of the first-time session, Unstuck, at the Promax Station Summit last week in Las Vegas. Check it out.