TV stations generally take a back seat to newspapers on the Web. But they can fully compete on the Web for local classifieds, localized national advertising and vertical services, according to Broadcast Interactive President Timur Yarnall. Yarnall’s company provides website development and sales consultation for 70 stations, mostly in small-and-medium sized markets. He was the featured speaker this week at a NAB/TVB Webinar.
To Yarnall, TV stations have been too modest in their efforts on the Web, often playing a supporting role to newspapers that have plied more money and resources into their Web efforts. Some TV stations, for instance, provide weather and sports video clips to newspaper sites, in hopes of keeping the local newscast front- and-center.
But stations don’t recognize that the local Web space is a free-for-all. Stations must play to win in an era where markets like San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix and Raleigh-Durham have surpassed 70 percent broadband penetration, and video on demand is as accessible as online articles.
Newspapers such as The San Diego Union-Tribune, Boston Globe and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have added video studios to their newsrooms. TV stations, said Yarnall, should fully fight back, competing for classifieds, search and other “newspaper” revenues.
“Shame on you if you are supplying video to a newspaper site,” said Yarnall. “It shouldn’t happen unless you get dominant share of revenue.”
Comprehensive Web Sales
Yarnall suggested that stations should leverage their local reach, and develop a comprehensive Web sales strategy, including the sale of a full range of banner ads; providing local reach to national advertisers; and building up several classified verticals in direct competition with newspapers.
For starters, stations can provide video streaming, where they have a home field advantage. Yarnall said that stations are generally getting $15 CPMs for 15 second pre-roll ads shown before video ads; substantially above the $1 to $6 CPM range seen for standard banner advertising. The five million Web viewers of CBS March Madness is ample proof that video on the Web is here to stay, he noted.
Classifieds are also fair game. Yarnall noted that they can make up over 50 percent of newspaper profits. But TV stations are arguably better situated to providing unique, video-oriented content to support the traditional Big 3 of classifieds: Real Estate, Recruitment and Autos. A station in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for instance, got Kelly Services to sponsor, and control, a Job Board.
Pursue New Areas
Stations can go further a field and seek new revenues from fast-growing areas such as healthcare that haven’t traditonally been liked to TV or newspapers. WTVF News 6 in Nashville, for instance, has developed a “Health Connection” part of the site that enables doctors to integrate their message in an objective setting –something that Yarnall said is essential to bringing in doctors. “Doctors are afraid of looking like salesmen,” he said, noting that the package brings the station $20,000 to $36,000 annually.
Some stations are additionally pushing on entertainment extensions. Raleigh Fox 50, for instance, has developed “Gimme The Mike,” an American Idol-like contest that has 100,000 registered viewers and a 7:1 ROI.
Other stations have pushed on Wireless text messaging. A Meredith UHF outlet in Atlanta, for instance, has developed CBS46togo.com, a traffic service that has gotten 44,000 callers and 350,000 page views. The current ROI is 8:1.
In my view, TV stations are generally poorly managed, and narrowly focused on their traditional ad base (autos). They are also short-sighted and unlikely to make the investments that are required to really compete. But watch for some break-outs. They are bound to occur.
Couple of additional backgrounders:
– “Gimme the Mike” is a package that is offered, syndication-style, to many local-market stations with both an on-air program and online voting component. When I worked at Belo, a few of our stations carried it, and that was back in 2004.
– That “Health Connection” idea also is common at TV-based sites operated by WorldNow, and was also tried at several Belo sites in 2003 and 2004 as a way to drive new revenues.
I was a party to the operations of several Belo TV-based Web sites for a few years there, and I can tell you they did much more than pay lip service to the Web as a new business development opportunity. At the same time, I believe we had (and Belo still has) some of the best local TV Web sites out there, offering news and information well beyond repurposed on-air segments.
It can be done.