Crafting The Rebirth Of NBC’s TV Stations

When Comcast took over NBCUniversal in January 2011, it said it was committed to broadcasting and promised to rejuvenate the 10 NBC Owned Stations that had been allowed to flag during General Electric’s stewardship. To deliver on the promise, the new owners tapped Valari Staab, the GM of ABC’s KGO San Francisco, made her president of the group, and gave her a hefty sum to invest in it. Now, Staab says in this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, the investment in investigative reporters, helicopters, additional newscasts, new facilities and other resources is paying off.

An edited transcript:

What do you think you have accomplished so far?

Overall, we have really strengthened our local news operations in all of our stations — tremendously in some of them. We had some news operations that were strong and we made them stronger, but we had some that were on shaky ground. WTVJ in Miami was the one on the shakiest ground. We have come a long way in strengthening that station to where it’s now No. 2 in the morning. It’s often No. 1 or No. 2 at 11 p.m. and it’s No. 2 at 6 p.m. It literally was fourth in most time periods two and a half years ago.

And to what do you attribute that?

I put a new general manager in there about six months after I took over,  Manny Martinez. He had run the Telemundo in Miami and he is a good solid broadcaster. He really knows that part of the Miami market that lives in both the Spanish-language and English-language worlds. We feel like that’s where that station has really grown — among the bilingual Latinos.

Do the other network affiliates do that or is that now your niche in Miami?

I feel like that’s our niche now. I think that people are catching on though because PLG [Post-Newsweek’s WPLG] hired a general manager out of Spanish-language television.

So overall, where are you in terms of ratings growth during your watch?

The year before I took over, 47% of our newscasts ranked No. 1 or No. 2. At the end of January, 72% of our newscasts were ranked No. 1 or No. 2.

Is that because your new newscasts are against weak competition?

No. We didn’t stick a newscast on that was immediately No. 1 or No. 2 anywhere. Where we have added newscasts is where we have had to fight to get into the game like the 5 o’clock slot in New York. So you’re fighting back from zero. This is real growth in the newscasts.

Any newscast or any station you want to highlight as doing particularly well, other than Miami?

I think Philadelphia and Chicago have made tremendous progress, too.

MAQ [WMAQ Chicago] is on fire. They’re either No. 2 or tied for No. 1 in their morning news and they have grown in every newscast. They’re No 1 or No. 2 in all their other newscasts. Their only weak point really now is the midday news where they’re still No. 3.

WCAU [Philadelphia] has also had
really good ratings movement. They were No. 3 or No. 4 everywhere. Now, they’re No. 1 or No. 2 except for the midday news.

And a lot of this had to do with some good old-fashioned investment, right?

Yep. We have added people, we have upgraded facilities, we have added resources. As you know, we gave some of these stations — New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago — that were in share agreements before now, control [back] over their own helicopters.

There are two things that strengthened our newsrooms quickly. One was adding a midday newscast. It’s easy to look at a midday newscast and do the math and say that it loses money or that it breaks even so I don’t want to do it. What a midday newscast does is keep the newsroom going all day long. It keeps everybody gathering news all day long. To have a big gap between your morning news and your 5 o’clock news weakens your 5 o’clock news.

The second thing is investigative units. We have put really decent size investigative units into these stations and, aside from giving you original content that your competitors don’t have and that you absolutely need in today’s world, it also gets everybody in the newsroom focused again on enterprise journalism. So, having journalists in your newsroom that are constantly breaking stories gets the other reporters breaking stories and working beats. It helps create a culture of enterprise reporting.

I am told that what’s really turned TV stations into 24/7 news operations is digital media. You have to be there all the time to feed the digital beast — the websites, Twitter and Facebook.

That’s true. It does help you create a culture of breaking news all the time. It’s a huge help. If you remember, that was an area where the NBC stations had gone a bit astray too because they were doing city sites instead of news sites.

Those lifestyle sites, I remember.

So one of the first things I did was turn them back into local news sites. We have had tremendous growth on the Web, and having original content on the Web is critical. Your investigative stories really go crazy on the Web.

And you have also made a big investment in stations and studios.

Yes. Dallas and Los Angeles are brand-new buildings from the ground up. Both had been in the same building for 60-plus years.

And what’s next?

CAU is going into the new Comcast building in 2017. San Diego is about to close on a new location and they will be in by ’16. And then we’re also looking at doing some work at WRC [Washington]. It’s probably a three-year project to upgrade the interior of their building.

We also have new studios and sets in New York and Miami. I think Miami — WTVJ — has one of the prettiest sets in the country, especially their weather set.

So what have been your missteps or the miscalculations or things that you thought that you could do that you haven’t been able to do? 

I think that in several markets we tried some things that didn’t work, and part of it is finding the right mix of talent and producers to create a morning show that worked. I think it took us a while to get the chemistry and the combination of elements right in some markets, not that that surprised me. Morning news is one of the toughest ones to get right because people expect in the morning personalities they are comfortable with — more so than in the evening.

That’s become a pretty important daypart.

Yes. That’s a very important day part. It’s your most hours of news so it’s a big inventory time. It’s a time where there’s a demand for more rating points than there usually are rating points in a market. So it’s a high-demand area and it’s an area that really sets a tone for the rest of your newscasts. It’s hard to have a strong news operation and a weak morning news.

Well, The Today Show could use the help.

No comment. I just deal with what I am supposed to deal with. It’s enough.

Let’s talk about the spot market. How did the first quarter go for you and what does the rest of the year look like?

We might be an aberration because of the Olympics, but we’re off to an incredibly strong start in this year. We had a wonderful first quarter.

Well, you are an aberration. Can you see past the Olympics to what the market is really like?

We’re starting to see through the Olympics, but we’re still not seeing any big red flags. We still think it’s going to be a good year. One market that looks to be soft is L.A.

Is there any particular reason?

I actually don’t know why it’s soft, but it’s definitely looking like it’s our softest market.

At NATPE, you said NBC was pushing ahead with its TV Everywhere initiative for the O&Os. What’s the latest on that?

We’re still looking at a June launch.

And as I recall, you plan to sell two sets of ads, one for over-the-air and one for TV Everywhere. Is that the plan?

Yes. You will be able to buy both of those if you want to, but if you don’t buy both, you will just run on whichever one you bought.

And why is that?

We’re just not considering [TV Everywhere] as a roll-in to over the air. We’re considering it as a separate product.

You don’t want to just give it away.

We don’t want to start out giving it away.

You have benefited in daytime from the addition of Steve Harvey and you’re going to be adding Meredith Vieira next fall — both from NBCUniversal. What are your plans for Vieira in terms of scheduling and promotion?

It’s going to be different in different stations. So it will be at 11, 12, 1 or 2 depending on the market. In most markets, it will probably be at 2 with Harvey at 3 and Ellen at 4, but we have 4 o’clock news in some markets so we haven’t laid out the schedule yet. In some markets she will come out of Kathie Lee and Hoda [in the last hour of Today], and in other markets [Vieira] will be in the afternoon leading into Steve Harvey.

We started promoting the show during the Olympics. We took some clips from her pilot and we strategically placed promos for when she was on in the Olympics. The night that she hosted prime, we were sure to run some of them.

How important is daytime? I know it’s not a big contributor to revenue anymore.

I think it strengthens your entire day. You know, everyone talks about how, with the time-shifted viewing, audience flow is not important. But time-shifted viewing accounts for only 25% of the viewership. That still leaves 75%. Audience flow still matters and I don’t want an hour of my day where I lose my viewers. I want people engaged across the day. So I think it overall adds to the strength of a station to have a strong daytime.

Talking about promotions, you made a point when you came in to restore your creative services departments at each of your stations. How has that worked out?  Can you absolutely say that that’s contributed to your ratings growth?

I believe it has. I can’t prove it quantifiably, but all these stations are stronger than they were two-and-a-half years ago and that’s certainly been a part of it.

I just recently asked all the stations to send me the promos they ran for the Olympics. What’s really interesting is how different those promos are. That really speaks to the change that has occurred. People really are focusing on what’s important in their market and what’s unique about their market.

But that also was a big investment that you made. That has certainly increased costs.

I was very careful with how I spent money, and part of what I did was made the corporate team smaller. There was a big marketing unit here that was trying to meet the needs of 10 television stations, which is impossible by the way if you think about the number of promotional elements each television station needs.

So we completely took out that marketing department and we have two people in corporate marketing now. So, aside from the money that gave me, I was able to more effectively spend money that was being spent at corporate, pushing it back to the stations. So I was very careful with every dollar I spent because we all know that local television is a mature business and we have got to be careful about the additional costs that we add to it.

Well, those New York dollars go further elsewhere.

I will tell you that they go a lot further in Dallas.

The other big thing was that you assumed responsibility for the 17 Telemundo stations last summer. What was the thinking behind that move and how has that changed the way you go through your day?

The thinking behind it is that local businesses are very different from national businesses and so it’s hard for people who run national businesses to know how to maximize local businesses. They’re just completely different businesses.

So the thought was to put the local businesses together, and with the massive resources that the NBC stations have, leverage those resources to help make the news departments of the Telemundo stations stronger, and so that’s what we have done.

How much integration of operations is there in the seven markets where you have Telemundo and NBC stations?

There are only two stations that share a general manager — San Francisco and Philadelphia. All the rest of them have separate general managers. Philadelphia is the only station that has a combined news department. Basically CAU’s news department hired the people to do the Telemundo newscast, but it’s really CAU’s newsroom that’s doing those newscasts.

Dallas is a good example of integrating operations in some of the other markets. They have two separate news teams that are producing their newscasts, but they work closely together. In Dallas, they’re in a brand-new facility and in the middle of it is a combined newsroom with Telemundo on one side and NBC on the other. The news directors are right across from each other in the middle of the space and they are talking to each other all day long. One assignment desk handles both Telemundo and NBC and they have complete access to our helicopter.

When things happen like breaking news or breaking weather, they’re right there together. They plan the coverage and they put people where they can cover the whole market and they put bilingual reporters in key places.

All of the Telemundo reporters speak English. They’re fluent in Spanish and they may have a heavy accent, but they speak perfectly good English. So anywhere you put a Telemundo reporter, the NBC station can take them. It’s no problem. So by spreading them out you can cover more of your DMA.

And so you have that kind of situation in what markets now?

It’s similar in Miami and Chicago and will be in Los Angeles as soon as KVEA [the Telemundo station] moves into the new building.

Your diginet Cozi started out as Nonstop, which was supposed to be filled with locally produced original programming. Now, it’s a classic Television channel. Is that it or do you still have ambitions to turn it into a vehicle for original productions?

The Nonstop model was very ambitious, but it just was not sustainable in terms of the amount of resources it took to create a second 24/7 channel with original programming. So it’s going to stay what it is now which is a classic TV channel. It’s getting really high viewership. It’s making money, it’s doing well, and it’s also a platform for us to move to when we need to. If we have a snowstorm in the morning, we can continue the morning news and weather coverage on Cozi.

Can you preempt Today and move it to Cozi?

Yes, and we have done that. If the breaking news event is so big that we’re preempting the network, we do send it over to Cozi.

This story originally appeared in TVNewsCheck’s Executive Outlook, a quarterly print publication devoted to the future of broadcasting. Subscribe here.