The NFL’s house ad was the most effective commercial of all the spots running in Super Bowl LVIII by at least one measure: creative effectiveness, according to an analysis released this morning by advertising creative effectiveness analysis platform Daivid.

Popeye’s “The Wait Is Over” ranked closed behind based on the AI-powered platform’s proprietary creative effectiveness methodology, which tested all of the Super Bowl spots on a panel of nearly 200 Americans.

See the top 10 ranked below based on a score of “10” being most effective.

NFL “Born To Play” Score: 7.45

Popeye’s “The Wait Is Over” Score: 7.29

Uber Eats’ “Don’t Forget” Score: 7.23

CaraVe’s “CeraVe with Michael Cera…Ve” Score: 7.11

Paramount+ “Hail Patrick” Score: 7.10

T-Mobile’s “Audition” Score: 7.07

Mountain Dew’s “Aubrey Plaza Having a Blast” Score: 7.07

T-Mobile’s “That T-Mobile Home Internet Feeling” Score: 7.04

Bud Light’s “Easy Night Out” Score: 7.03

Pringle’s “Mr. P” Score: 7.01

State Farm’s “Like A Good Neighbaaa” Score: 6.93

The post Most Effective Super Bowl Spots, Creatively Speaking first appeared on Media Group Online.

The strike really did a number on broadcast and cable TV

Having seen firsthand how the research sausage gets made, Next TV has a lot of respect for Samba TV and the data it pulls from “tens of millions” of smart TV users who have voluntarily, it claims, “opted in” to its data collection panel.

And having been decidedly underwhelmed by the myriad “research” reports that tell us which programming genres are hot in streaming right now, we approached Samba TV’s second-half of 2023 “The State of Viewership” report with a bit of shock and awe. (You can access the whole 43-page kitchen sink here, which we encourage.)

In the interest of brevity — and our own cerebral processing limitation — here are five pages from the report that stood out for us:

The Hollywood Strikes Really Did a Number on Broadcast and Cable TV Usage

It’s interesting that Netflix can acquire the umteenth SVOD window for a 10-year-old Brad Pitt war movie, Fury, from Sony Pictures Entertainment and merchandise the film to deliver 7.3 million streaming hours last week.

Netflix’s top executives were a pivotal negotiators amid the paralyzing, summer-long Hollywood talent guild strikes. But as Fury showed, Netflix can make its tank go, regardless of the supply chain adversity.

The linear broadcast and cable networks? Not so much.

As this Samba TV graphic shows, broadcasters and “cablers” typically get a nice reach bump in the second half of the year, with viewers not only tuning in for football, but the new fall shows.

In the second half of 2023, not only was part of football streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday nights, as well as on YouTube on Sunday, but there were no “fall season” to check out.

Data from Nielsen seems to corroborate Samba TV’s findings. Linear market share didn’t expand like it normally would in the second half of the year.

Also notable to us: Less than 60% Baby Boomers, linear TV’s biggest audience, have a cable or satellite TV subscription right now.

Roku Channel is the No. FAST

Based on Insider Intelligence data, Samba TV ranks Roku Channel as the most popular FAST platform, ahead of Tubi, Pluto TV, Amazon Freevee and Crackle.

Disney Plus Is Now Mostly an Ad-Supported Service

As of October, 53% of signups for Disney Plus were for the service’s ad-supported plan. That figure compares to 39% for Netflix and 22% for Max.

Hulu and Max Experienced the Highest YoY Churn Increase

Amid a competitive market or U.S. subscription streaming, in which every provider raised prices in 2023, Hulu and Max experienced the largest increases in churn.

“Audiences continue to limit the number of services they will subscribe to in order to keep costs down,” Samba TV said in its report. “In fact, about half (46%) of U.S. households watched tow or less services throughout the second half of 2023. Subscription cycling is a way of live, as every platform saw churn increase year-over-year and about half of Gen Z indicating that they plan to cycle through subcriptions with the next six months.”

Political Ads Aren’t Reaching Their Targets

While political ads are reaching 77% of the “Silent Generation,” younger folks, who consumer more connected TV and less linear, aren’t getting the same exposure, Samba TV notes.

Advertising 101 suggests that younger demographic groups are targeted because, well, they are more impressionable and haven’t made their minds up as much.

Understanding these consumption dynamics might be key in an election year, no?

The post How Linear TV Lost Its ‘Bump’ in the Second Half of 2023 … and Other Delights From Samba TV’s ‘State of Viewership’ Report first appeared on Media Group Online.

The post Why Advertisers Are Paying Up to $4 Million for Super Bowl Pre-Game Commercials first appeared on Media Group Online.

The 100% digital future of TV is on its way. In fact, in many ways, it’s already here.

As a viewer, you enjoy the advantages of connected TV with Disney+, Netflix, Paramount+, and other streaming services.

As an advertiser, you know in your bones that the audience and performance data delivered by CTV will transform advertising — ultimately making your campaigns more targeted and effective than ever before.

At a recent briefing of analysts and investors, Innovid executives and customers explored the rise of digital TV. As you can see in the video clips below, they discussed how the viewership of CTV is expanding, why advertisers are boosting CTV spending, and how the format can help strengthen advertising performance.

Read (and view) on to better understand how CTV is transforming TV and advertising.

CTV Is Changing How Viewers Watch TV

The numbers tell a clear picture of how viewers are flocking to CTV. Between 2019 and 2024, CTV viewership is projected to more than double. Currently, the average adult spends 2 hours and 14 minutes per day viewing subscription OTT. By 2025, 87 percent of U.S. households will have streaming devices, according to a Parks Associates report.

Streaming is also changing how fans watch sports; they are taking in games on platforms such as Paramount+, Peacock, and ESPN+. The day is fast approaching when more streaming platforms will bid for (and win) major sports leagues’ TV rights. As a result, many of the games you want to watch will not be available on linear TV.

Ad Spending on CTV Is Booming

As more viewers move to streaming, advertisers shift budget there, too. Advertisers follow eyeballs. It’s an ironclad phenomenon called the Meeker Gap. Analysts project CTV spending will continue its rapid growth, reaching $40.9 billion in 2027, according to eMarketer.

Additionally, formerly subscription-only services are adding advertising options. Netflix and Prime are just two examples of streamers moving from purely subscription video on demand (SVOD) to also offering advertising video on demand (AVOD).

More than 50% of all U.S. internet users will watch AVOD in 2023. Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) is also growing. Three streaming services—Local Now, Plex, and Roku—each offer more than 400 channels, according to Variety.

CTV Is Poised to Make Advertising More Effective

CTV and the interactive advertising it enables promise to make campaigns more effective. As TV becomes more digital, it becomes more like the internet, and so advertising on TV now presents more opportunities throughout the marketing funnel and shifts advertising from purely an awareness play to one that generates measurable outcomes.

These advanced creative executions, which can include usage of QR codes, are extremely effective, and Innovid has the data to prove it. For instance, one recent advanced creative effort delivered a 600% lift in consumer engagement.

CTV generates streams of data. With this information, advertisers can assess campaign performance in real-time and optimize just as fast (especially if they’re using Innovid’s new feature, Instant Optimization). Ultimately, CTV enables advertisers to actually put into practice the age-old advertising maxim of the right message to the right audience at the right time.

The Next Generation Isn’t Watching Linear TV — Don’t Get Left Behind

Linear TV has dominated how the world’s leading brands and the globe’s top agencies view advertising. This legacy may be slowing the shift to CTV. So as digital natives like Millennials and Gen Z gain more control of advertising budgets, expect that the momentum toward CTV advertising will only accelerate.

Learn more about how Innovid can prepare you for the future of TV — today. 

The post 100% Digital TV Is Coming. Are You Ready? first appeared on Media Group Online.

Pricing for national TV 30-second commercials for this year’s Super Bowl is up 11% from a year ago to $6.47 million, according to Guideline, the ad spend and pricing data measurement company.

Guideline says the $6.47 million price tag (versus $5.83 million in 2023) is the collective perspective across all “currently” booked spots.

The company’s “forward bookings” result reflects media buys across all six major U.S. agency holding companies and leading independent agencies, which has a focus on major national brand advertisers.

It cautions that specific pricing for some thirty-second units may be above or below this level, including “those leveraging legacy rates.”

Guideline also says Super Bowl deal negotiations may also include sponsorship integrations and/or bonus commercial inventory in other programming.

The biggest category in this year’s Super Bowl is food brands. Entertainment marketers held the top position a year ago. Guideline did not go into financial specifics. New growing categories in the big NFL game include prescription drugs, personal care, toys/games, and media.

Looking more broadly, Guideline said national linear TV ad spend for 2023 is down 7% year over year due to the writers and actors strikes that ran several months during the year.

Ad spend against entertainment programming decreased 12%; drama, a 13% decline; reality, down 12%; and comedy, 14% lower.

By contrast, sports TV ad spend for programming/content was up 4%. Looking more granularly: NFL programming ad spend grew 15%; NBA was 17% higher.

In 2022, Guideline was formed through a private equity-backed merger of the two then leaders in advertising spend/pricing data, SQAD and Standard Media Index.

The post Super Bowl Price Soars 11% to $6.47M Per :30 first appeared on Media Group Online.

Sports get big boost from viewing in bars, restaurants

Nielsen said it is expanding the panel it uses to measure out-of-home TV viewing, which will mean bigger ratings for sports programming.

Nielsen currently has portable people meters that viewers wear in 50 of the biggest markets, representing 65% of the country.

After the expansion it will have meter-wearing panelists in every state except Alaska and Hawaii.

Expanding to 100% coverage of the continental U.S. will result in an increase in OOH contribution to the national data, a Nielsen spokesman said.

Nielsen began capturing viewing in locations such as airports, hotels, bard and restaurants about 10 years ago. It started including those viewers in its national ratings in 2020.

According to Nielsen, in 2023 fans in the U.S. spent more than 1.7 trillion minutes watching games from the five most-watched sports leagues.

Out of home viewing gets trickier to measure as more viewers turn to streaming and more sports programming appears on streaming platforms.

“Nielsen is highly focused on innovating in order to better serve our clients and ensure our measurement accounts for the full landscape of television consumption,” Deirdre Thomas, chief product officer, audience measurement, said. “We understand how important it is for our clients to be able to have the most complete picture of the audience, especially for special events like the Super Bowl.”

Nielsen plans to provide data including the additional meters in the fourth quarter of 2024, in time for Super Bowl LIX in 2025.

“We are appreciative of Nielsen’s efforts to make out-of-home measurement more complete, providing a much clearer picture of the true audience for all television viewing and especially sports viewership,” Paul Ballew, chief data and analytics officer at the NFL, said. “For years we have been consistent in our belief that major sports events, like the upcoming Super Bowl LVIII, are often viewed with family and friends in large gatherings and this expanded out-of-home viewership will be crucial to measuring those events.”

Jon Lafayette

The post Nielsen Expands Panel Measuring Out-of-Home Television Viewing first appeared on Media Group Online.

A lot of the political spending so far has been tied to the presidential race, but an ad tracking firm says it has seen an uptick in pre-booking among several key U.S. Senate races.

AdImpact says $88 million worth of ad time was reserved last week across Montana and Nevada by three different groups for their Senate general elections in what was the first major prebooking of the 2024 cycle.

The money came from WinSenate, a Democratic group looking to hold onto the Senate. It booked ads worth $35 million in Nevada to back incumbent Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and another $26 million in Montana supporting incumbent Senator John Tester (D-MT).

The Republicans are spending too, as they look to gain total control of Congress. The GOP groups Senate Leadership Fund and American Crossroads spent $22 million in Montana, hoping to knock off Tester.

In terms of money already spent, AdImpact says $19.9 million has been invested in Montana to date and $577,000 in Nevada. But based on the reservations, broadcasters in both states can be optimistic about what’s to come.

Political dollars are flowing in New York City, ahead of a Feb. 13 special election for the House seat vacated by Rep. George Santos. AdImpact says $6.8 million has been spent as Democrats hope to pick up what has been a Republican seat. The California Senate contest is also driving spending on the West Coast. AdInpact says $5.9 million has been invested in political ads in Los Angeles during the past two weeks, with another $4.2 million spent in the San Francisco market. The highest spending advertisers were the groups Schiff for CA Senate ($5.8 million), Porter for CA Senate ($2.5 million), and the Congressional Leadership Fund ($2.1 million).

The next Republican presidential primary is in South Carolina on Feb. 24, but the ad dollars have not yet materialized as they did in Iowa or New Hampshire. AdImpact says former South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley is “dominating” the airwaves, spending $5.6 million compared to just $400,000 that has been invested by former President Donald Trump and his supporters. All of Trump’s spending has been on digital, too. “There has yet to be a broadcast ad in South Carolina in favor of Trump,” says AdImpact. And beyond just South Carolina, the firm says pro-Haley ads across the country add up to $78.9 million to date, versus $58.3 million for Trump.

President Biden has been spending despite having only modest challengers on the Democratic ticket. AdImpact says the Biden Victory Fund has been the top spender on Facebook and Google so far, spending $1.2 million with the digital players.

AdImpact projects a record $10.2 billion will be spent during the 2023-2024 election cycle across all media, including radio. The forecast, if accurate, would mean political ad spending will grow 13% from the record $9.02 billion that was spent during the last presidential election cycle four years ago.

The post More Political Dollars In Cue As Senate Ad Buys Begin Rolling. first appeared on Media Group Online.

With the recent news of iSpot.tv’s acquisition of 605 — both leading TV ad measurement companies — and premium publishers’ adoption of VideoAmp’s dataset as a new video currency, it’s hard to ignore the race toward alternative currencies across the media industry.

Nielsen, as the dominant legacy TV measurement partner and a shared currency across buyers and sellers alike, now has serious competition from a host of new players who have built massive viewership datasets that include upwards of 80 million TV households compared with its much smaller panel of just 40,000.

With so many new measurement options and lack of auditing or independent third-party accreditation, it’s easy to see why some of us are waving the red flag at this stage in the race.

It reminds me of when my father was teaching me how to drive. He focused on the usual things like using the pedals, reading the dashboard warning lights, and how to parallel park, but those were not the most important things to learn in his opinion. He also stressed the importance of using all my mirrors.

“The best way to avoid an accident is to know your surroundings,” he’d say. “You don’t just need to see what is ahead, but what is to your sides, and what is behind you.” This lesson came long before lane change assist sensors, blind area detection technology or the backup camera, but it is still sound advice for today.

So what does this have to do with alternative video currencies?

Most of us in the marketing business are focused on the future — and therefore looking through the windshield at what is ahead. We see fresh, entrepreneurial companies challenging the incumbent through innovation and ingenuity.

They are young companies like VideoAmp and iSpot.tv, and ones with slightly more mileage like Comscore, which all have developed and continue to grow massive viewership datasets for planning, buying and measuring video campaigns against advanced audiences.

They shift positions at each turn as they announce new publisher partnerships, release new measurement features and add to their household panel coverage.

Meanwhile, it seems like most of the industry sees Nielsen in the rear-view mirror — an older car with less horsepower and diminishing grip on the track. Slow to the start and less able to hold the turns.

Even their tune-ups, like the release of NielsenOne that promises deduplicated, cross-media measurement in one place against both broad demography and advanced audiences, doesn’t seem to thrust them back into the lead.

But as Nielsen’s competitors race for lead position, there should be serious concerns from the spectators.

Younger and faster isn’t always better. While they may have much larger datasets than Nielsen’s 40,000-household panel for TV, all this data is at a household level, not an individual level.

So as an advertiser, you don’t really know who you reached in that household since many TV screens are shared devices. You have no guarantee that you hit the right person in that home who is part of your intended audience.

Nielsen’s people panel, while much smaller, is at the individual level. It knows who in the household is watching TV content and can account for co-viewing at the program level.

It is also important to remember that while this person-level viewership data is based on only 40,000 households, Nielsen does calibrate its currency against its own set-top box and smart TV data set of nearly 72 million households.

The challenges of household-level versus person-level viewership data are not just limited to the currency. This delivery data is the basis of all reach and frequency analyses, which are crucial in supporting efficient media strategy.

The goal in media planning is often to maximize your reach and control frequency against your intended audience — not against the household. To optimize your plans against household level reach and frequency measurement could really get you off track, leading to significant waste.

Finally, unlike Nielsen, alternative currencies also lack third-party accreditation from the industry’s de facto self-regulatory source, the Media Rating Council (MRC).

This poses significant challenges for advertisers, agencies and publishers alike. How do you standardize value when multiple currencies are involved? How long will it take for all parties to agree on which alternative currencies are audible? These are serious questions that will take time to answer.

So, before we swap measurement and currency partners as easily as we change lanes, let’s slow down. Let’s make a pit stop. Refuel and kick the tires.

And as we drive back into the oval, I say let’s use all our mirrors. We need to know where everyone is on the track.

Who knows? This race might take multiple partners to win.

The post Alt Currency Race: Why It’s Time for a Pit Stop first appeared on Media Group Online.

CBS says the conference title game averaged 55.473 million viewers; FOX also touts biggest ever NFL playoff ratings

CBS said Tuesday that it averaged more than 55 million viewers for Sunday’s playoff matchup featuring the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs beating the Baltimore Ravens. The network also said that was its biggest ever audience for an AFC Championship game.

The network said its previous high for the conference title game came back in January 2011, when an average of 54.850 million viewers tuned in to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Jets.

CBS’ announcement came as FOX (broadcaster of Sunday’s NFC title clash between the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions) also beat its chest, noting an all-time best average audience of 44.7 million for its three combined January NFC playoff games.

As Taylor Swift once again stood in the press box to cheer on her boyfriend, Chiefs perennial All Pro tight end Travis Kelce, CBS was (relatively) restrained in its camera cutaways to observe the billionaire and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter.

Meanwhile, as CBS prepares to broadcast Super Bowl LVIII t Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Feb. 11, with the Chiefs taking on the 49ers, pundits in a perpendicular media universe are grappling with what it all means:

The post Who’s Tired of Taylor? CBS Says Sunday’s Chiefs-vs.-Ravens Matchup Was Its Most Watched AFC Championship Game Ever first appeared on Media Group Online.

Angela Grande, director of streaming news channels at NBCUniversal Local, says FAST channels represent a unique and powerful opportunity for local news, but choreographing the relationships between stations, platforms and tech partners is a fast-evolving dance. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

There’s a palpable excitement among broadcasters about FAST channels, and there’s plenty to love about them for local TV newsrooms.

For one thing, they work just like linear television merely transposed to a streaming environment, allowing newsrooms to tap into muscle memory to put content there. And for another, stations have near-limitless latitude in programming FAST channels, not having to navigate around network programming or other linear guardrails.

Angela Grande is director of streaming news channels at NBCUniversal Local, and her job of late has been to build out the group’s rules of engagement for FAST. The role involves mediating between the local stations, the various FAST platforms themselves — an ever-growing number — and the group’s back-end technology partner. It’s an environment of constant communication and iteration of increasing strategic importance as FAST gains currency among viewers.

In this Talking TV conversation, Grande explains how she choreographs it all, what NBCU Local is learning about FAST’s utility value and where she sees the landscape headed.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: Broadcasters have been very leaned into FAST channels for a couple of years now. Like everything else, that platform is evolving quickly and it’s a moving target for programmers. FAST channel strategies need to be nimble and nuanced, and there needs to be plenty of conversations, both internally within a broadcast group and with FAST streaming technology and platform partners, to keep the product well-oiled.

I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV, our weekly video podcast. Today I’m with Angela Grande, director of streaming news channels at NBCUniversal Local. We’ll talk about how she works with NBC owned stations, the platforms on which their FAST channels iterate and their technology partner as part of an ever-evolving strategy. We’ll be right back

Welcome Angie Grande, to Talking TV.

Angela Grande: Hi, Michael. So excited to be here talking with you.

Very glad to have you, Angie. FAST channels have been around for a few years, but local news is relatively new to that ecosystem. How have you developed relationships with the major fast platforms so that you can maximize the performance of your news channels?

Yeah, that is such a great point. This is a fast-moving space, no pun intended and working with these platforms has been essential to our success, which we’ve seen rapidly happening since we launched our first channels in January of 2022. So, we’re about two years in, over the course of the past two years.

My team and I have worked to really strengthen our relationships with each platform, and we do so by meeting with them regularly, every other month, if not monthly. We have clear lines of communication, and we’ve set up pipelines where we can get the plans from the stations and then get that information to the platforms so that their channels can be promoted during big events like the Chicago Marathon, New Year’s Eve, major weather events… The strength of our relationship is what’s really helped us push that forward.

Can you kind of paint a picture of this relationship, what it looks like on the day-to-day? I mean, I know part of it is being aware of the platform’s own marketing priorities, right? And then topicality is important, as you just mentioned, things like marathons, New Year’s Eve, etc.

We work really closely with each of the platforms like I shared. And we have a calendar of all of the big events or topics throughout the entire year that they really feel strongly about leaning into. So, when we go to our day-to-day, we keep that in mind. And then we work with all of the individual stations. My team and I work with nearly two dozen stations across the NBCU Local division for Telemundo and NBC.

The stations generate all the content. We work with them directly to get their content plans on big events, like maybe a big weather event like a hurricane in Florida, New Year’s Eve in Times Square for New York, the Chicago Marathon for our Chicago market. We gather their plan and what they’re going to be producing for the channel. We’ve then set up direct pipelines of communication to all nine platforms that we’re currently working with and counting, and we write up a pitch, we send it to the platform, they buy in. “Oh my gosh, that sounds like a great event. Let’s get on a call.” And that’s where we get really excited, because we can start collaborating and brainstorming new ways that our channels can be promoted. So that’s where they’ll say we can send a push alert out to all users in that in with ZIP codes in that area, or we can put that channel in a prominent position.

One very simple and effective thing that we’ve come up with over the past two years is if you look at the layout on any of the platforms, you’ll see a generic tile. We call it a tile, right. You’ll see like NBC Chicago with the peacock and the Chicago logo. Well, during a big event, one thing we now do for everything is we’ve worked with the platforms to take a special graphic and swap that in. So, when people are scrolling through the guide, they see that special event and they immediately know if they click in, that’s what they’re going to get. That’s one really effective method of helping increase our discoverability during big events.

So, you’ve got your graphics department at the ready to jump in, and spin something like that up or throw that together pretty quickly, it sounds like?

Yeah. My team pairs with the HQ marketing team here in our local division, and then we reach out to each individual station and their brand director will create the graphics. If we’re working with Chicago on the Chicago Marathon, that team will know we’re going to get into promotion mode with the platforms and that their team will create all the special graphics. We also know at this point all of the different specs that each platform requires, and then we get all of the graphics in through the pipeline to get that special promotion up and running.

There’s no fumbling around looking at what the specs are, and you’ve got everything. You’re just ready to push it, resize things and go and run.

Exactly.

A lot of the events you’ve talked about so far have been events that we all have access to, but you’ve got the Olympics at NBC coming up in Paris. I imagine that’s going to be quite significant for your FAST channel programming and marketing.

Oh, we’re so excited about that. We just had a call this week with our marketing department and all stakeholders across the division who are creating special content that we’re going to be able to take and build into all of our FAST channels. So, we’re super excited about that.

We also are doing kickoff calls now that we’re in the new year, with each platform and one top agenda item on each of our kickoff calls is the Olympics. We want to look ahead: Are there any special layouts we can come up with? Different ways to alert viewers that we haven’t tried yet now that we have this highly coveted content that only we can provide on our channels? We’re so excited to really get into brainstorm mode with the platforms, and then again to work internally on all of the great ways that we can be creating special content.

And one thing that’s really incredible with these games is we now have these FAST channels, 15 FAST channels up and running, and that is a total free space for all of this great content. We can take all the station-made content by special digital teams, the HQ team here in our division and create hours of Olympic coverage that we can then pitch to platforms and get in special sections on their guides.

In the road to the Olympics, how far out will you begin to start rolling out content — that is, pre-Olympics coverage?

This month. We’re in January and it’s already begun.

Wow!

That’s the call we had this week internally where pieces are already being created and special shows are already being crafted leading up to the games this summer. And we’re already working on how we can start plugging them into the channels on the weekends when we know people are clicking in for a little bit more of a laid-back experience. And then as we increase the production across the division of that content, we’ll begin to formulate longer blocks, especially on the weekends as we get closer to the games to build that anticipation.

Internally within NBCU Local, you’ve also got a lot of wrangling to do with all of the individual O&Os, and each station has its own channel and its own channel captain, a person who has been assigned there to spearhead for FAST and interface with you. Who typically plays that role in a newsroom?

It varies based on the station. I say that most news directors have appointed an assistant news director as that captain, an EP. We’re also starting to see a new trend across our division where there are, you know, directors of multiplatform content where they’ll be focused on digital FAST and other pillars.

And this is one of the pillars that will fall under their purview. We’re seeing that happen across the division — strong editorial sense, people who can latch on to new technology, which is a big part of our production. These partners have been essential across all the stations and making this happen.

How does your team work individually with each station? How do you collaborate in a pragmatic sense?

We put a lot of thought into this when we first got started. We’re like, OK, we have 20-plus stations to be communicating with constantly, right? And we formed a small team of 10 people here in South Florida with two members in other stations. We have one person in Chicago in the Central time zone and another person in L.A. to cover the West Coast. The rest of us are down here in our Miami office.

A big hurdle at the beginning was how do we break down the walls and virtually embed ourselves in all these newsrooms across the country, because we need to know when news is breaking. We need to know when stations need to go live. We’re in charge of making sure that these channels are up to date and clean at all times. So, what we did was we tested different methods of communication. We did a lot of crowdsourcing, and we came up with a great plan that I’m so proud to say is successful.

We’ve built Teams channels for each newsroom and in those Teams channels are all members of my small-but-mighty team, and then the captain from the newsroom, like you had mentioned, management tech folks, digital folks, we asked for a representative from each day part editorially to be in that channel. And we simulate a live newsroom experience. So, if there’s breaking news in New York, someone from the New York newsroom will put in the team’s chat. “Hey, we, uh, just had a big fire break out in the Bronx. We’re about to break into the channel and go live.” My whole team sees that and jumps in and says, OK, we’ve got your back. If you we need to cut into something, we’ll make sure your playlist is clean. So that’s how we’re basically shouting across the newsroom to each other while being at all different parts of the country.

Is Teams a good tool for that? You find it sufficient?

Again, we do crowdsourcing, so some parts of our division are using Slack, some are using Teams, some people like email. We had to come in, and my goal was let’s put ourselves everywhere. So, we’re everywhere, but we decided that that’s where most of our TV partners were. So that’s why we landed on Teams as the place to put those channels, and it’s been working really well.

You also work with Amagi on the back end as your primary tech provider for the FAST platform itself. Another prong of your job is about trying to constantly iterate this technology. How does that work? How do you communicate there?

Amagi is a company that’s based in India. So, all of our tech partners for all of this development are in a completely different time zone and a completely different part of the world. So that in itself is amazing that we’re making this happen.

But what my team is doing is we’ll work with them. We have a meeting with them every single morning, the tech folks on our team, and they do a call with our partners at Amagi and then other partners from here in the division and the HQ tech team also join. And what we’ll do is share with them, as a user at a station, it would be so great if I could just hit a button and have this happen, or if I’m a programing manager here on my team in the Miami office, and I need to run 15 channels, is there a way to make the playlist do X?

So, we’ll take all of that information as users to Amagi. They develop it, and then my team serves as the people who will test it out as the super users of sorts. And then we get it to the place where we know we want it to be, and then we’ll go out and train people all across our division in all the newsrooms on how to use this new technology.

One incredible example is, in order to go live, we know you need a control room, and you need a producer, and you need all sorts of people in place, right? But one function that we’ve developed over the past couple of years with Amagi that every newsroom is now using is what we call the “immediate go live button.” And what this allows is a station can — let’s go back to that fire in the Bronx — New York can have a fire in the Bronx, they can route that feed into a web browser, hit “go live” and it immediately breaks into the channel. This can be done from a laptop on your couch at home. It can be done from your desk. It can be done from anywhere. This has really just brought so much flexibility to the whole breaking news pillar of this division. And we are seeing in our Teams chats and our virtual newsrooms throughout the day, at least once an hour. One, a newsroom is reaching out saying, “this just happened, I’m going live. This just happened. I’m going live.” And they’re using that button. It’s crazy.

So, you’re much more liberal about going live on FAST then on other platforms?

Well, yeah. What’s really incredible is it’s our space, right? In linear we share the space with other programming. We have our time slots. But here on the FAST channels it’s all ours. And I think that’s been a new opportunity for all the newsrooms and a new way to think editorially. Some great examples are when there’s big breaking news and say the Today show comes on or Nightly News is about to begin, the stations can tell their viewers, we’re about to go to Nightly News here on TV but follow us on our FAST channels because we’re going to keep this coverage going.

The 4th of July, not last year, the year before, we had, unfortunately, the parade shooting in Chicago and our FAST channels were only about seven months old at that point, but this technology was ready. So, what happened was it was, on the 4th of July, they were still searching for the gunman in this story. That was a huge public safety issue. You know, alerts going out all over. The suspected gunman was on the loose. They had to go to the fireworks on the network, and the Chicago team said, we’re about to go to the fireworks, but we want to tell you, join us here on these platforms right now, and we’re going to continue to take you through this developing story.

And then on the FAST channels, they were able to showcase when the guy got caught and everything that happened after. We tracked the analytics after that, and we actually saw how the audience pulled and spiked right during that moment when on TV, they brought people over to a place where they had more control to keep the story going.

You’ve anticipated my next question, which is: It’s one thing to be able to go live a lot and you do, it sounds like, but it’s another, you know, what do viewers think of this? What do you know from analytics?

Oh, I mean, you know, we’re two years in and we’re still very much studying all the data, and we’re definitely trying all sorts of things in partnership with all the stations. But one thing I can absolutely tell you is working is live breaking news, major events like hurricanes. We have so many success stories for our Telemundo Florida and NBC South Florida channels when it comes to major weather events down here in Florida.

The Chicago Marathon, that’s a great example of how community events that have big interest really pull viewers in. We had the Chicago Marathon, that team did an incredible job in the fall this year, and it set records for engagement when it came to the numbers that we saw.

One upshot of the FAST platform and its technology is that it allows for a lot more modularity than linear TV, and we’re talking here especially it allows for flexibility, obviously going live, where you don’t have to bump up against other programing. That’s one, one part of it, but there’s also the modularity of the units — the increments of programing that you can do. How have you been able to capitalize on that so far?

When it comes to stacking the playlists, we’re testing all different lengths of shows. One thing that’s really important to us, we want to make sure that when people are scrolling through the programing guide, what they’re reading should be matching what they’re seeing. And as we’re introducing all these systems, we have a special system just for populating the EPG, the electronic programing guide. And one thing we know through the systems is 15 minutes is the minimum show time that could be used in order to have it labeled. So, we try to keep that as our minimum and then we grow from there right to 30 or one-hour times.

One thing that we’ve definitely learned through this process is it would be amazing if news is breaking and you can quickly type it in and it would just pop up just as quickly as we can go live. But the truth is, we’re learning we need about 48 hours in order to update that guide successfully, to have the graphic match, and to have the text match on the guide.

To bring this conversation back to where we began and the platforms, the vMVPDs, with which you work, what are your priorities right now in terms of getting more out of these relationships? Do you want more data? Do you want more of anything else from them?

The partnerships have been incredible. I have to just say it’s been awesome. Just like we have captains from each station that we talked about, we have direct partners from each platform that are our go-to people. We’ve set up Slack channels with everyone, you know, email, phone calls, regular meetings. We have a great foundation.

One thing that we’re really excited about in this year is to continue exploring how we can increase our discoverability. One thing that they’ve all shared with us is that consumers are really looking for local news. They’re coming to these platforms and they’re seeking it out. They’ve shared anecdotally—the platforms—that they’re going to be rolling out more features to help give local news more prominence on the platforms.

So, something that we are looking to get more of from them is to help really increase our discoverability. Are there different ways of merchandizing we haven’t tried? Are there things unique to local news that could be new ways to reach viewers, that we can brainstorm and experiment with? So, I’d say to increase experimentation when it comes to merchandizing.

And also, another pillar would be data. Data is just … this is new to everyone, and I think gathering data from all the platforms has been an understandable hurdle, and it’s something that we’ve been navigating over the past two years. Our HQ analytics team here at NBCU Local has gotten very creative with taking what we can and making it work to at least tell us stories we need to drive our strategy forward. But I’d say, going back to your question, what do we need? We really need to continue to brainstorm, get creative, experiment and try new things for discoverability and to get more data to help us drive our success on their platforms.

Makes sense. If you were to venture any predictions about where FAST channels are headed in terms of their strategic importance to TV news, what would you say?

I would say increasing the amount of live breaking news we’re seeing, really increasing the cadence, like turning that into like a 24/7 experience, like on our FAST channels, locally speaking with the news, the stations are going up, they’re going live, breaking news is happening. But I think that as we continue to get more from the data that shows us it’s pulling people in, just seeing the frequency of that happening more and more.

Well, Angie Grande, it has been a pleasure talking to you about NBCU Local’s work on FAST Channels. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to all of you for watching and listening. There’s a new episode of talking TV most Fridays, and you can catch all of the past episodes we’ve done on TVNewsCheck.com on our YouTube channel, and we have an audio version you can find most places that you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching and listening to this one. See you next time.

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