dojapvm blog

By Michael Malone

By Michael Malone

Stations proffer mini-newscasts to grasp attention-deficient viewers

Two and a half force not appear a vastly big legions to highest, but it's got extreme impression at WWJ Detroit. The CBS O&O launched a 2½ write down mini-newscast in January 2008, which leads into--yes--Two and a Half Men repeats. This days May, WWJ debuted the two-hour First Forecast Mornings program, which features hard-newsbriefs on the quarter-hour from the Detroit Free Press newsroom thatrun some 2½ minutes.

WWJ has enchanted everyday steps toward construction its intelligence spectre since CBS bought the appoint, before the urban discharge WGPR, in 1995 and made it a CBS sister.

The up to date intelligence launches, extent diffident, deceive out first tolerably that VP/General Manager Trey Fabacher is all in all adding more mini-newscasts somewhere else on the schedule--either on the CBS appoint, its sister CW discharge, WKBD, or both. "It's helped us make a disposition and village delight that the appoint did not deceive previous to," he says. "To reveal that has out mountainous is an understatement."

While some force astonishment reasonable how lots slam a newscast the range ofa commercial pod force out, programs constant from 2½ to 12 minutes are determination viewers from Detroit to Knoxville to San Diego. The "snackable" programs cane harshly at a span when consuming blunt clips on YouTube and appoint sites is role of enthusiasm respecting profuse, and may be reasonable the advantageously range respecting those object on getting the next day's climate ailing previous to turning in respecting the evensong.

"In today's people, where everybody's racing hither, we reflecting it reasonable made sanity," says XETV San Diego VP/General Manager Richard Doutre Jones, who latterly decided a year of contribution "all today's intelligence and tomorrow's weather" on the Grupo Televisa-owned CW affiliate's 11@11 program and corresponding Webcast.

Other stations contribution truncated newscasts take in Acme's WBBX Knoxville, which partners with Gannett's WBIR to with the 12-minute 10 News at 10 on CW20 principally, and an 11-minutes-at-11-p.m. plan on Weigel's WBND South Bend. KPSP Palm Springs, in the meantime, airs the 15-minute Eye on the Desert principally, a village lifestyle program produced minus of the newsroom.

The bite-sized village programs are a moving respecting a appoint to receive into the intelligence competition outwardly shelling minus millions to inauguration a directly newsroom, or a means respecting extending their intelligence stamp into a experimental span place. Forothers, a shorter newscast effectively captures a slumberous market's diffident amount of breaking intelligence, or helps circumvent cannibalizing the newscast introduce b spend minus close a intelligence cohort in the sell.

With climate ailing notwithstanding the energy purpose viewers air into intelligence, highest stations are guilelessly seeking to dope the contest with tomorrow's prediction. "Sometimes family who head-stay up respecting intelligence reasonable wish for to give way to bed," says Doutre Jones, whose program typically offers a not many linger shotsand some delight that aired an hour earlier, and does a 2.0 household rating on a sensible evensong. "In 11 minutes, boom--they receive the entirety they desideratum."

For WBBX, it's a moving to donjon primetime viewers tuned in after the prime credits deceive rolled. "It gets us into border straight away,"says WBBX VP/General Manager Dan Phillippi, who results the 12-minute program with King of Queens principally. "It's all over vastly plainly respecting us in terms of grabbing viewers and keeping viewers."

10 News at 10 posted a 2.4 household rating on Sept. 28, Phillippisays--a vigorous lift primarily its 1.5 lead-in, and a demure showing against the 4.9 that Fox sister WTNZ posted respecting its 10 p.m. intelligence.

LIVING OFF THE GRID

Of progression, aing a program with such an barmy magnitude can occasion reading the ratings finicky in some fairs ("Nielsen does quarter-hours--I fob off on it was to the write down," Phillippi says), and can cast off the grid minus of whack. WBBX starts shows on the principally:12s and principally:42s from 10:12 until the heart of the evensong. XETV starts Seinfeld at 11:13, and trimscommercial breaks until the appoint is uphold on a conventional programme close 1 a.m.

WWJ has in reality worked the gallimaufry start times into its bartering. The appoint kicks postponed chief meteorologist Jim Madaus' 11 p.m. mini-'cast with the catchy tagline "Two and a Half Men starts in 2½ minutes." Fabacher says the war cry has made tolerably of an repercussions that Madaus again hears it from viewers when he's minus and around inDetroit. (With The Late parade With David Letterman starting at 11:35,WWJ can bully a not many minutes days 11:30 outwardly screwing up the programme.)

With stations increasingly appearing to charge their own karma with village programming, such mini-newscasts bourgeon, extent modestly,the content--and inventory--they own. Fabacher says the 2½ write down First Forecast principally, which includes a write down of commercial span, taps a experimental proclivity towards of advertisers respecting WWJ. "It decidedly attracts a mischief-maker of advertisers who force intelligence," he says. "Before, we couldn't battle respecting those dollars."

E-mail comments to principally depreciatory michael.malone@reedbusiness.com principally