NBC/Telemundo Stations Overhaul CMS, Sites

NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations today launched a massive back- and front-end reconstruction of its NBC and Telemundo station digital products.

The new content management system (CMS) was designed and built in less than 12 months and done in collaboration with a redesign of the desktop and mobile web experiences that serve English and Spanish-speaking audiences across 30 markets in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The new CMS is designed to make it easier for local newsrooms to create content for digital platforms while the company said the redesign “provides a sleek, modern magazine-style look with improved features for breaking news, weather, investigative reporting, live streaming and digital video.”

This is the stations’ first major digital overhaul since the sites were introduced in 2008. The new look and CMS were designed and built from the ground up by the group’s internal design, product and development teams in conjunction with partner agencies and station digital news.

“A year ago, we set out to create a new digital experience for our stations and audiences that is flexible, intuitive and fast,” said Lora Dennis, SVP of digital, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. “Our new CMS workflow is a one-of-a-kind ecosystem that will help more than 1,000 local journalists navigate this digital space with ease. Our new websites are beautiful and set a high bar for the way that local news is presented to both English and Spanish-language users.”

Key features of the NBC/Telemundo stations’ digital overhaul include:

CMS 

• Code-writing from scratch for desktop, mobile web, app API’s and feeds across 45 sites that serve users in two languages.
• The migration of millions of images and content items.
• Creation of responsive sites/layouts to support users’ consumption from any screen and platform.
• Training of more than 1,000 station journalists to make it easier for local news teams to create content for digital platforms.

New Sites

• Brand new homepage that prominently features breaking news and news livestreams.
• Improved local weather experience that makes the stations’ exclusive, state-of-the-art weather radar technology even more accessible to users.
• New feature article page created to showcase the stations’ unprecedented commitment to long-form storytelling including investigative reports and series.
• An immersive news video hub that encourages a lean back viewing experience.
• Exclusive, new font that is clean and modern, and provides stations with consistency in branding across all broadcast and digital/mobile platforms.
• Updated advertising experiences that better showcases clients’ products while balancing users’ preferences.