Programming Everywhere: NBCU Local Flexes Its Multiplatform Muscle

“Old Media” faces new challenges as traditional television networks seek ways to create promotional material that works across multiple-devices and various cultures. Jeremy Berg, director of digital video at NBCUniversal Local, runs the company’s digital innovation team, which is charged with creating compelling content specifically designed to be formatted and distributed across multiple platforms and a variety of languages. He will be speaking at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show on April 14.

“We have 11 NBC stations we own across the country, 30-plus Telemundo stations across the country, and four regional sports networks,” he notes. “We help all of them with their content My team is made up of multiple producers and editors. We call them unicorns or predators. They can do a little bit of everything. They shoot, they write, they edit, they produce. Some of them are bilingual.

“Our job is to try new things. And the big thing these days is creating content for many different platforms. Everyone knows that you’re not just making content for one platform anymore. We’re talking about streaming channels, our FAST channels, newscasts, TikTok and more. We’re talking about every social media [platform] you could possibly think of and all of our websites and apps.”

Regarding the Olympics, which represents enormous revenue for the network, he says, “It’s a big part of what we do every two years, winter and summer. And one of our biggest successes in multiplatform content has been a project called My New Favorite Olympian. These multiplatform podcasts explore athletes outside of their sport: What they’re doing outside of track and field, outside of swimming, what they’re doing to help. You can download them on Spotify or on Apple.”

But the podcast is only part of what his team creates. “We’re NBC. We’re video,” he says. “So, this is also a TV show. We record these interviews. We hire a great former Olympic athlete to come on and host. And they sit there and tell these stories to our audience in video format, in a studio.

“This material is then also re-edited into short-form verticals or TikTok-style videos to introduce you to these athletes. They serve kind of as a promotional material to get you to go watch the whole [interview] or download the podcast. Every time we look at a different platform, we might have to edit something differently.”

His department doesn’t only create material for English speakers. “NBCUniversal Local has a great group of Telemundo stations as well,” Berg notes. “When we did this for the World Cup, we did Spanish language interviews,” available as podcasts such as Mi Mundialista Favorita and also in multiple other formats. “I’m very fortunate to have multiple bilingual people on my team that were able to conduct interviews in English or Spanish.”

Berg will discuss the multifaceted process of planning, shooting, posting and formatting content that feels tailor-made for the daunting number of formats — phones, 4K TVs, desktop monitors, podcasts — with a variety of languages, audio capabilities and running time specs.

It’s mind-numbing just imagining the deliverables requirements for every piece Berg’s team creates. “You have so many content voids you have to fill,” he says of the topic he intends to cover at the NAB Show. “Whether you’re a news producer, a news director or a digital content producer, you need to always be thinking about everyone else.”