If you want to get on the good side of broadcasters, it's obvious that you need to give them what they want. But what exactly is that? According to the News/Broadcast Network Inc., New York, rounding out the news that's not tied to breaking stories (accidents, fires and disasters), sports or politics are these soft features: 8.6 percent are medical related, 6.7 are business coverage and 2.9 percent are entertainment focused.
Those findings were based on NBN's August fax survey that was sent to 102 stations nationwide. Even though the query also concluded that stations have a loyalty to hard news and that 73 percent of their video content is generated locally, execs did say that 21 percent of their video content comes from news services and 3 percent from video news releases.
So brush up on the routes you use to pitch news services (we provide monthly analysis in our Media Insight feature on page 3) or try to inject some local flavor in your VNR. (NBN, 212/889-0888)