This post was originally published on this site
If Hearst Television’s digital strategy was encapsulated by a word, “reach” would be a fair choice.
The broadcaster has shuffled its digital leadership since last fall, when it promoted Andrew Fitzgerald, a former Twitter executive, to SVP of streaming video services, a move finally signaling traction on the OTT front, where it has yet to launch any apps for its stations.
Then in January, Hearst promoted Ernesto Mourelo to VP, digital news, putting him at the helm of a hydra-like structure of national teams charged with aggregating and “amplifying” local content likely to resonate across its markets, along with producing original material for its websites, apps and social pages.
In an interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, Mourelo says an imperative is “to seize on trends and ideas that can be broader storytelling pieces” emerging across the group and to get them in front of as expansive an audience as possible.
A passionate advocate of newsroom and content diversity, he says the “visibility” of a gay, Hispanic executive like himself is key to its advancement, as are the more inclusive monthly meetings on sensitive content decisions he hosts. And as to Hearst’s elusive OTT apps, he says that a curation team has begun work on a nascent product.
An edited transcript.
What’s your remit at Hearst? Ramping up digital news production? Growing audience? Paving the way for meaningful digital revenue?
It is a little bit of everything actually. I have been a part of the corporate digital team now