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Some people flock to streaming platforms for juicy dramas. Others queue up quirky comedies. But there’s also an audience willing to binge-watch local journalism. Just ask NBC Bay Area.
Last week, the NBC-owned station dropped its second season of Derailed, an in-depth digital series investigating problems at BART, the Bay Area’s beleaguered public transit system. The whole project lives on NBCBayArea.com, YouTube, and Apple TV, ready to stream in six digestible episodes ranging from about 4 to 15 minutes long.
“We call it giving viewers the Netflix experience,” says news director Stephanie Adrouny. “People are used to being able to see something when they want to see it. They don’t want to be teased. They want to know that ‘I can go see it right now, when I want to, for as many chapters as I want to see.’”
That strategy has had clear success for the streaming giants, but it was a bit of gamble for an investigative news team — even one that prides itself on using digital platforms to reach a market known for low TV viewership.
“While we drop a lot of digital-original content, we’d never done a big series like this on digital-first,” says Adrouny. “Typically, we’d put it on TV, and it goes from there. But we wanted to get away from that. If you’re a BART rider, we thought, ‘Hey, maybe you’ll watch Chapter One on your way to work and Chapter Two on your way home.’”
For Derailed, Bigad Shaban