By Steve Schwaid, CJ&N VP of Digital Strategies
We’re clearly in the midst of summer TV doldrums. On broadcast and cable on any given night, it’s an assortment of reruns, reality and a smattering of summer shows. Broadcast and cable viewership looks like it’s down or flat.
But the streaming services? They thrive during the summer. Fragmentation abounds.
What does this mean for local TV stations?
For newscasts, attracting viewers is an even bigger challenge. Many summer late news lead-ins poorly deliver to the late newscast no matter how hard you push to drive viewing with topicals and live cut-ins.
Then add those people watching Netflix, Hulu, Prime and YouTube – people who will never see your prime time topicals and may forget to turn over to your newscast.
On top of that, it’s getting harder use Facebook to market topically because of its constant algorithm updates.
There is hope.
In addition to your on-air signal, you have exclusive control of one valuable tool – a tool that is right in front of your users 24 hours a day.
It’s the push alert tool that’s part of your app.
Question: Do you have a push alert strategy or is it catch-as-catch-can?
While some stations do have a thought-out strategy that guides their use of push alerts, many others do not. Rather than helping themselves with an aggressive strategy, some managers think push alerts are intrusive or annoying to news consumers. Research doesn’t support their opinion. It’s clear from our research that push alerts have the ability to drive people from their phone to your newscasts.
Users want them! In our research we asked users if they recall getting a push alert – a majority said they don’t recall one. That’s a content and branding opportunity for your station.
We also asked those who get alerts whether they get too many? The clear answer was no, keep them coming. Again, another branding and content opportunity.
Alerts should engage the user and direct them to either click through for information or turn to the upcoming newscast. And the alerts should include real content; digital users don’t want teases!
Here are examples of effective alerts that could drive the user/viewer to take action to watch the newscast and/or open the app.
Push alerts provide direct connection with your users and viewers. There is no other tool besides your air that can do that.
And it’s free.
If you would like to discuss or need help developing or refining your strategy, please let us know. We’re here to help.
