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Local broadcasters have come a long way on their digital platforms.
Streaming has opened up a vital flank to grow audiences and monetization, and station groups have made a marked improvement handling audience data, enabling more actionable relationships there.
Digital teams have refined their understanding of which forms of content are more suitable for different platforms, sharpening their versioning skills. At the same time, the multitude of platforms has opened up opportunities for different types of storytelling and exposure to new audiences and demographics.
Catherine Badalamente
Creating great content and having audiences view that content isn’t enough, though, digital officers said during TVNewsCheck’s Digital Leaders on New Frontiers webinar last week. Tracking audience engagement and gathering first-party data is essential to delivering top-notch user experiences.
“We recognize we have to tell stories differently depending on who the audience is,” said Catherine Badalamente, VP and chief innovation officer, Graham Media Group.
While some content can work across all platforms, broadcasters said they are tailoring stories for different platforms by versioning them.
Jennifer Mitchell
“There are reasons people go to certain platforms for certain types of content,” said Jennifer Mitchell, SVP content development, ABC Owned Television Stations.
For instance, short-form video works well for Snapchat while longer form content, such as “director’s cuts,” resonates more with the streaming “lean-back, television-like experience,” she said.
Ethan Dreilinger, global client solutions engineer, The Weather Company, said that when content is presented