Gannett Stations Go VJ

This was in today’s Denver Post (with thanks to Charles Newcombe who made me aware of this posting in b-roll.net)

arts and entertainment
KUSA re channels workload, product
The Gannett station is pushing multitasking by staffers and ad interaction by viewers.
By Joanne Ostrow
Denver Post Television Critic
Article Last Updated: 03/14/2008 12:40:26 AM MDT

The changing realities of the broadcast industry are arriving at KUSA-Channel 9.

Multitasking by newsroom personnel and the push to drive viewers to interact with advertising are new priorities, according to KUSA general manager Mark Cornetta.

A recent visit to Channel 9 by Dave Lougee, the president of Gannett Broadcasting Division in McLean, Va., underscored the retooling.

Lougee, the news director at KUSA from 1990 to 1996, is traveling to Gannett stations this month to trumpet what staffers call “the new normal.”

“In the old world, one person shot a story, another edited it, a third told the story. In the new world, one person would be reporter/photojournalist/editor and producer for TV and the Web,” Cornetta said.

Some complain about it, some love it, he said. “People are picking up a camera who never have before.”

In reinventing itself as a multimedia producer for TV and the Internet, the station is “moving to a more customer-centric focus, trying to understand what advertisers look for,” Cornetta said.

Accountability, namely measurement of ad “click- throughs” on the Web, is expected by today’s advertisers.

The station is working to accommodate advertisers by steering consumers to microsites on the Internet. An experiment, modeled after one by Dish Network, involves integrating traditional advertising with extra online content. Think of it as popup ads on TV.

Nationally, cable- and satellite-TV companies are investing millions in interactive features that let viewers take more control of what they watch. A major trend is “triggers” that appear during live programming that lead to on-demand content or to interactive screens to let viewers sign up for contests, order brochures or make purchases.

Regularly scheduled TV commercials are embedded with a graphic overlay, or trigger, urging viewers to leave the program they are watching to view a product or service video. Interactive TV lets advertisers know demographic information about households.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com