C H A P T E R

1. 15 C H A P T E R Radio, Television, and the Web

2. Topics Covered in Chapter 15 • The Reach of Radio and Television • Television • Personal Appearances • Product Placements • The Web

3. The Reach of Radio and Television • More than 13,000 radio stations in the United States reach about 150 million Americans on an average day. • More than 800 televisions stations in the United States also reach a mass audience. • Local television news attracts about 150 million viewers. • The average U.S. household still watches more than • eight hours of television per day. • Almost 70 percent of adults list local television news • as their primary source of information.

4. The Reach of Radio and Television cont. • Writing and preparing materials for broadcast and digital media, requires a special perspective. • Instead of writing for the eye, a practitioner has to shift gears and think about adding audio and visual elements to the story.

5. The Reach of Radio and Television cont. • Radio news releases in the industry are called audio news releases or ANRs. • Radio news release is written for the ear. • It has an emphasis on strong, short sentences that average about 10 words that can be easily understood by a listener. • A standard one-minute ANR is about 160 words. • A radio release is written in a conversational style.

6. The Reach of Radio and Television cont. • Eighty-three percent of radio editors use ANRs. • Topics of interest include regional interest, health information, financial news, technology stories, children’s issues, politics, seasonal stories and local interest issues.

7. The Reach of Radio and Television cont. • Public relations personnel working for nonprofit organizations often prepare public service announcements (PSAs) for radio stations. • A PSA is an unpaid announcement that promotes the programs of government or voluntary agencies or that serves the public interest. • Radio PSAs are written in uppercase and double-spaced, and their length can be 60, 30, 20, 15, or 10 seconds.

8. The Reach of Radio and Television cont. • Another public relations tactic for radio is the radio media tour (RMT). • Essentially, a spokesperson conducts a series of around-the-country, one-on-one interviews with a series of radio stations from a central location. • A public relations practitioner prebooks telephone interviews with radio representatives. • A major selling point of the RMT is its relatively low cost and the convenience of giving numerous short interviews from one central location.

9. Television • There are four approaches for getting an organization’s news and viewpoints on local television. • News release • Media alert • Pitch a story • Video news release

10. Television cont. • An estimated 5,000 VNRs are produced annually in the • United States. • A typical 90-second VNR, says one producer, costs a • minimum of $20,000 to $50,000 for production and distribution. • On average, it takes four to six weeks to script, produce, and distribute a high-quality VNR. • The traditional VNR package is like a print media kit, and it has various components that enable the television journalist to produce a television news story.

11. Television cont. • Video News Releases have come under fire because television stations often use them without source attribution. • Watchdog groups have complained that stations using VNR content without telling the viewers about the source is presenting “fake news.” • The Public Relations Society of America and the National Association of Broadcast Communicators (NABC) issued a new standard for VNRs to be sent to television stations.

12. Television cont. • Television stations use PSAs on behalf of governmental agencies, community organizations, and charitable groups. • Many of the guidelines for radio PSAs apply television PSAs. • PSA’s must be short, to the point, and professionally produced. • Both audio and visual elements must be present.

13. Television cont. • The television equivalent to the radio media tour is the satellite media tour (SMT). • Today, the SMT is a staple of the public relations and television industry. • Essentially, an SMT is a series of prebooked, one-on-one interviews from a fixed location via satellite with a series of television journalists or talk show hosts. • The easiest way to do an SMT is to simply make the spokesperson available for an interview at a designated time.

14. Personal Appearances • When scheduling a guest on a television program, PR practitioners should be totally familiar with a show’s format and content as well as the type of audience. • A checklist to use before booking a spokesperson is below: • Is the topic newsworthy? • Is the topic timely? • Is the information useful to viewers? • Does the spokesperson have viewer appeal? • Can he/she stay on track and give concise statements? • Can he/she refrain from getting too commercial?

15. Product Placements • Television’s dramas, comedy shows, movies and game shows are all good vehicles for promoting a company’s products and services. • Product placements are sometimes called plugs and are often negotiated by product publicists and talent agencies. • PR specialists should be alert to opportunities for publicity on television programs and upcoming movies. • Often, product placements can be mutually beneficial for the product and the television show producers.

16. Product Placements cont. • A logical extension of product placements is convincing popular television programs to write an issue or cause into their plotlines. • The flip side of asking scriptwriters to include material is asking them to give a more balanced portrayal of an issue. • Another form of product placement is agreements with radio stations to promote a product or event as part of their programming.

17. The Web • There are more than 6,000 news sites, and the number grows each day. • Many Web sites, of course, are extensions of a particular newspaper, magazine, radio or television station, or even television network. • Podcasts, blogs and webcasts are all important tools journalists and public relations practitioners use in the digital media process.