Austin is now the second-fastest growing city in the country, and KVUE’s Boomtown project reveals how that growth is affecting housing pricing and its very identity.
Austin, Texas, is the second-fastest growing city in the country, making it the 10th largest city in the U. S., according to the 2022 Census Bureau population estimates for U.S. cities and metro areas, cited by the city.
What’s driving this growth? And how is it changing the identity of Austin, a city known for being laid back and weird, by its own affectionate term.
“With the extreme growth, the people that really made Austin what it was, that weird city, the musicians, the artists are being moved out,” says Enrico Meyer, director of marketing at KVUE, Tegna’s ABC affiliate.
KVUE has been covering the progress of population growth in Austin since 2020 in a series titled Boomtown.
“We heard stories of 90 offers being submitted on a house,” Meyer says, among the revelations the project has uncovered.
The Boomtown reports show how the growth is affecting housing pricing and availability, property taxes, traffic, infrastructure and the very identity of the city, whose slogan since 2020 has been “Keep Austin Weird.”
The Boomtown reports are finding an audience on linear television and on digital. In May 2022, KVUE focused the entire month on Boomtown and the station’s 10 p.m. news won the sweep in adults 25-54 according to Nielsen.
Meyer says the Boomtown stories air on all the station’s digital platforms.
“It’s really found an audience on digital with much, much higher views than our traditional stories,” Meyer says. “Most of the stories that we have on YouTube average between 200 and 400 views. Some of these Boomtown stories are getting 10, 30, 40, 50,000 views.”
Meyer says Austin is a very tech savvy audience, so the station is pushing them to KVUE+, its streaming platform.
“If people need a one-stop shop to find it they can go to KVUE+ and engage with all of the stories there,” he says. “We are in a great position to really define what this means and focus on what is important for Austinites with this storytelling.”
The Boomtown reports reveal that much of the growth is attributable to tech companies relocating to Austin.
“Apple has got a presence here, Facebook has got a presence here, Google has a presence here, Oracle is headquartered here, and obviously Tesla has a presence here,” Meyer says. “Since Texas doesn’t have state income tax it is attractive for companies to move here.”
Meyer says while the underlying issues to the Boomtown coverage are about growth and affordability, the storytelling focuses on how it affects the people.
“We really want to get to the heart of who is it affecting, who is it impacting and hear from them because that is what it is all about,” Meyer says.
NOTE: On July 13 at 1 p.m. ET., TVNewsCheck will present a Working Lunch Webinar, Reinventing the Relationship with Local Audiences, that will share more about Boomtown and how it has caught on with viewers.
TVNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp will also talk with leading TV marketing executives from Cox Media Group, Gray Television and Graham Media Group about how they are promoting substantive local initiatives designed to engage a larger audience across platforms.
TVNewsCheck Webinar, Reinventing the Relationship with Local Audiences
“With Promax’s Station Summit on pause for this year, we saw a strong demand among station marketers and creative services directors to convene a discussion around powerful local projects and their creative strategies,” Depp says. “This webinar will tap into substantive initiatives that really deliver on the local value proposition and illuminate how they were built.”
Enrico Meyer, marketing director at KVUE, is one of the speakers.
He joins Deirdre Conley, creative services director, WSOC Charlotte, N.C.; Jim Hays, creative services director, WOIO-WUAB/Telemundo Cleveland, and Stephanie Slagle, Graham Media’s VP and chief innovation officer.
Market Share will preview topics presented by Conley and Hays in the coming weeks.
CLICK HERE to see how Graham Media’s station in Detroit launched a Help Desk to provide answers to questions submitted by viewers.
CLICK HERE for more information about the speakers and the webinar.
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