Kayla Thomas, creative services director of WLBT in Jackson, Miss., came up with a solution to balance commercial production and station promotion for two stations. “We are finally rolling like a well-oiled machine,” she says.
Local TV creative services and marketing directors typically have a lot on their plates. And keeping the plates spinning takes constant vigilance so as not to let one drop.
And if one plate is destined to fall because there are just too many, it should be the manager who decides which one that should be.
Some local TV creative services and marketing directors oversee both station promotion and commercial production. They have more plates to keep spinning. And they typically have two departments to keep happy — sales and news, and maybe to a lesser extent, programming.
Kayla Thomas came up with a solution about a year ago, and “we are finally rolling like a well-oiled machine,” she says. Thomas is the creative services director at WLBT, Gray’s NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss. Gray also operates WDBD, the market’s American Spirit Media-owned Fox affiliate, under a shared services agreement.
Thomas detailed her system in a post on LinkedIn and she agreed to allow me to share it on Market Share.
“We are in a shared services agreement so we serve as the creative services department for two completely separate TV stations, with completely separate commercial production and station promotion needs,” Thomas says.
She says she felt drained trying to keep all the plates spinning, and sometimes, “we weren’t even hitting all of either of the stations’ goals.”
Shoots and edits fell behind, other assignments started later than she liked. “I knew my producers were working as fast as they could, yet we were still always so backed up.”
Thomas has a team of five, plus her. She says she looked at who was on the team, and assigned roles based on strengths. “I gave each producer a primary role — 1 primary shooter, 1 primary commercial editor, 1 primary station editor, 1 producer primarily focused on the SSA, and 1 primarily focused on news promotion, specifically positioned in the newsroom. Not only would this fix the bottlenecking issue, but also my challenge of getting every producer trained to perform at the same level so that the quality of our production is consistent.”
Thomas says the results under the new structure have achieved the following:
- Increased our rate of production. Availability to shoot is no longer impacted by what’s being edited; once the primary shooter finishes a shoot, it is off to the next one!
- Reshaped and sped up our training process. By training to fill one role, rather than every responsibility of the department, the training is focused; new hires are up to speed on their role in less than 12 months.
- Created consistency in quality of production. Because there is a primary shooter, all other producers are allowed ample time to grow their shooting skills before they are ever needed to shoot for air. With each producer spending the majority of their time developing skills in a particular area, they master their roles; when we fulfill production requests as a unit, the department’s overall quality of production is consistently high.
“This has been the most efficient and effective approach to production for my team of 5,” she says. “There is a person in place to champion each expectation of the department.”
Keep those plates spinning, Kayla.
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