Graeme Newell’s Blog
The Promo Producer’s Role in the Newsroom
The first deadlines of the news day always belong to the promotion staff. Most topical promos start at least a couple hours before the newscast. When you add in the time needed for writing, editing and production, the promo deadlines are three or four hours before the actual newscast. What this means is that most promos never get enough promotable material.
read moreHiding – the Latest Challenge in TV Marketing
After a few clicks on some broadcast web sites, you will be asked to "register." Some get very personal, asking for intimate facts like income, family size, contact information and personal interests. In these days of identity theft, registration is a very spooky process for many people. For years TV newscasts have warned that identity theft is rampant and viewers should never give out personal information over the internet. Yet some sites are asking audiences to ignore the warnings and trust them.
read moreDo you Have a True News Brand or Just a Slogan?
In the old sitcom "Bewitched" the heroine's husband, Darrin Stevens, worked at an ad agency and many of the episodes showed him and his wonderful wife Samantha, teaming up to come up with that perfect slogan line that make the product an automatic success. It was a classic advertising cliché - find just the right turn of phrase and all your marketing woes will be solved. This same mindset still lives on in a lot of television newsrooms around the country.
read moreJump-Start Tips When You Can’t Find the Teaseable Component of a Story
When writing a tease for a story, many producers will try to synopsize the entire story, searching for a way to compress a list of story highlights down to one pithy line of copy that will entice the viewer to stay tuned. The problem is that this is an almost impossible task. A good story will be loaded with interesting teaseable facts. Synopsizing a fact-rich story removes the interesting detail that is the lifeblood of any compelling package.
read moreEffective Web Site Teases
Driving traffic to your web site is a priority task for most newsrooms these days. Front-line producers have developed sophisticated strategies to carry viewers from segment to segment, but effective web site teasing is rare in our business. In most newsrooms it is an afterthought - at best.
read moreOveruse of the Words "You" and "Your” in Teases
When I first started writing promos and teases, my supervisor instructed me to use the words "you" and "your" as much as possible. This was especially important in "how to" stories. I was told to give the impression that we were giving the viewers a lesson in something that would improve their lives. But when you apply this thinking to stories that have a smaller audience, the effectiveness starts to fall apart. As a matter of fact, use of "you" and "your" can actually dissuade the viewer from watching.
read moreLazy Promo Writing for Familiar Stories
Ah, the staple news stories - fires, meetings, accidents, shootings, tax increases, storms, elections, etc. Year in, year out, we see them come around. We've come to expect a standard fact list from these perennial favorites. Whether it's the Christmas shopping rush, politicians running for office, or summer gas prices, most of us could guess all the major facts of the story - sight unseen.
read moreAbandoning the Advertiser Mindset
Trust in advertising is at its lowest level ever. A lot of this shift has been brought about by the increasingly available pool of user and non-biased reviews on the web. Advertisers are shifting more and more of their budgets to PR. They position themselves as an expert on their own product and join in on the conversation.
read moreSeamless Transitions from Network Closing Credits to News
The teases that come at the end of primetime are among the most important components of a newscast. Unfortunately, the credit squeeze tease is very short, typically only about ten seconds. Most producers try to cram as many stories as possible into this tease, diminishing the likelihood that great sound or video will ever be used.
read moreTurn Your Anchor Tosses into Anchor Teases
The weather toss and the sports toss are the two places in a newscast when on-air talent get to shine. Most shows are so tightly scripted these days that this is about the only place for talent interaction. In most shows, the weather and sports talent have a brief on-air conversation with the news anchors just prior to their segment. The goal of this component is to show a bit of personality, and to carry viewers into the next part of the program.
read moreHire Graeme
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