January 19, 2004
Slush funds | For Maine TV stations, there's no business like snow business
By Michaela Cavallaro
It's January in Maine, which means freezing temperatures, snowstorms, icy roads and school closings. It also means local television news anchors sporting cozy sweaters as they introduce their station's branded bad-weather coverage, complete with dramatic ˆ even ominous ˆ theme music and breathless updates from parka-clad reporters in the field.
It's blizzard season, and that means big business for Maine television stations.
"Every single year, severe weather coverage ends up being identified as the number one audience interest," says Steve Thaxton, president and general manager of WCSH 6 in Portland, explaining the results of the station's ongoing audience research. "I've been in local TV for 23 years, and this has always been the case ˆ even when I worked in Phoenix."
And what draws viewers tends to draw advertisers, businesses eager to get their products or services in front of all those extra eyeballs.
That wasn't always the case, though. Alan Cartwright, general manager of WGME 13 in Portland and a 35-year broadcasting veteran, remembers a time when advertisers shied away from buying airtime around severe weather broadcasts. "We wouldn't want to answer the phones during storms because advertisers would all cancel," he says. "They'd think, 'Nobody can get out to get to my store.' But now they've learned it's a great time to be on, because everybody's at home watching TV."
Attitudes have changed so much that most local television stations now offer special sponsorship packages tied to their bad-weather programming, which is typically dubbed something along the lines of "StormCenter" or "StormTrack." "It's very good for our business," Cartwright says.
The prevailing model for these sponsorships requires advertisers to commit upfront to sponsor, say, StormCenter for an entire season ˆ whether that means two storms or 20. Advertisers typically pay a premium for those spots ˆ though none of the station executives interviewed for this story were willing to discuss specific dollar figures ˆ and are rewarded with exclusivity. WCSH, for example, limits its StormCenter sponsors to 10 advertisers total. (WABI 5 in Bangor deviates from this model by offering spots in its TV5 StormWatch broadcasts to advertisers who have made a significant financial investment in the station's regular coverage.)
According to Bill Hahn, general sales manager for WMTW 8 in Portland, advertisers that sign on as sponsors of the station's StormTrack coverage typically renew their contracts every year. "They see the association that they not only benefit from the advertising, but they also create goodwill within the community," he says.
Alarm them, and they will watch
The ridiculousness of some of the conventions of bad weather broadcasting is not lost on those in the business. Thaxter of WCSH says one of the first tasks on his to-do list when he came to the station "six winters ago," as he puts it, was to change the StormCenter theme music, a foreboding tune he thought was "over the top." But station staff insisted the music is instantly recognizable, and that it serves as a signal to viewers that they should put down their magazine or look up from making dinner to see what's on the screen. Thaxton was won over when random individuals on the street were able to hum the theme without prompting when asked to do so by the station's promotional team.
Clips from that experiment were later used in a humorous marketing spot for StormCenter ˆ a new approach WCSH started about three years ago. Since then, the station has run lightly self-mocking promo spots of the anchors trying on their StormCenter sweaters and mugging for the camera and, this year's installment, a Matrix-themed spot so popular that management decided to stream it on the station's website (www.wcsh6.com).
And it's not just WCSH that's making use of the Internet for its severe weather coverage. In the last few years, many stations have introduced Web and e-mail features to augment their on-air broadcasts and bring in additional revenue. WGME, for example, offers StormTeam 13 Desktop Weather, downloadable for free from its website (www.wgme.com). The application runs from your desktop and alerts you when there is a weather or news update. According to Cartwright, about 30,000 individuals have downloaded the program; 35% of them use it at work, a fact that the station gathered in a brief demographic form users must complete before they can download it. And though banner advertising in general has been largely discredited, WGME finds advertisers attracted to the specific ˆ and quantifiable ˆ audience for the Desktop Weather program.
At WMTW, viewers can sign up for a daily weather e-mail that provides forecasts down to the level of a specific street address. Hahn says the e-mail has about 7,000 subscribers and has been reasonably popular with advertisers ˆ "Response has been good, but it always can be better," he says. Unlike WGME, WMTW doesn't collect much information from its e-mail subscribers; Hahn says experience has shown that the more questions they ask, the fewer people fill out the form. Besides, getting user demographics isn't the priority for this service, he says, adding, "It's more important to us as a promotional vehicle for our weathercasters and our news products."
With weather cited as the number-one reason viewers choose a particular television station, it's unlikely that the bells and whistles associated with severe weather coverage will decrease anytime soon. In fact, WCSH even offers its own StormCenter emergency car kits for sale. Still, says Michael Young, general manager of WABI 5 in Bangor, "Our fundamental belief is that if we do a good job at covering the news ˆ and weather is a big part of the news ˆ that viewership will follow, and advertising support will follow that."
It's blizzard season, and that means big business for Maine television stations.
"Every single year, severe weather coverage ends up being identified as the number one audience interest," says Steve Thaxton, president and general manager of WCSH 6 in Portland, explaining the results of the station's ongoing audience research. "I've been in local TV for 23 years, and this has always been the case ˆ even when I worked in Phoenix."
And what draws viewers tends to draw advertisers, businesses eager to get their products or services in front of all those extra eyeballs.
That wasn't always the case, though. Alan Cartwright, general manager of WGME 13 in Portland and a 35-year broadcasting veteran, remembers a time when advertisers shied away from buying airtime around severe weather broadcasts. "We wouldn't want to answer the phones during storms because advertisers would all cancel," he says. "They'd think, 'Nobody can get out to get to my store.' But now they've learned it's a great time to be on, because everybody's at home watching TV."
Attitudes have changed so much that most local television stations now offer special sponsorship packages tied to their bad-weather programming, which is typically dubbed something along the lines of "StormCenter" or "StormTrack." "It's very good for our business," Cartwright says.
The prevailing model for these sponsorships requires advertisers to commit upfront to sponsor, say, StormCenter for an entire season ˆ whether that means two storms or 20. Advertisers typically pay a premium for those spots ˆ though none of the station executives interviewed for this story were willing to discuss specific dollar figures ˆ and are rewarded with exclusivity. WCSH, for example, limits its StormCenter sponsors to 10 advertisers total. (WABI 5 in Bangor deviates from this model by offering spots in its TV5 StormWatch broadcasts to advertisers who have made a significant financial investment in the station's regular coverage.)
According to Bill Hahn, general sales manager for WMTW 8 in Portland, advertisers that sign on as sponsors of the station's StormTrack coverage typically renew their contracts every year. "They see the association that they not only benefit from the advertising, but they also create goodwill within the community," he says.
Alarm them, and they will watch
The ridiculousness of some of the conventions of bad weather broadcasting is not lost on those in the business. Thaxter of WCSH says one of the first tasks on his to-do list when he came to the station "six winters ago," as he puts it, was to change the StormCenter theme music, a foreboding tune he thought was "over the top." But station staff insisted the music is instantly recognizable, and that it serves as a signal to viewers that they should put down their magazine or look up from making dinner to see what's on the screen. Thaxton was won over when random individuals on the street were able to hum the theme without prompting when asked to do so by the station's promotional team.
Clips from that experiment were later used in a humorous marketing spot for StormCenter ˆ a new approach WCSH started about three years ago. Since then, the station has run lightly self-mocking promo spots of the anchors trying on their StormCenter sweaters and mugging for the camera and, this year's installment, a Matrix-themed spot so popular that management decided to stream it on the station's website (www.wcsh6.com).
And it's not just WCSH that's making use of the Internet for its severe weather coverage. In the last few years, many stations have introduced Web and e-mail features to augment their on-air broadcasts and bring in additional revenue. WGME, for example, offers StormTeam 13 Desktop Weather, downloadable for free from its website (www.wgme.com). The application runs from your desktop and alerts you when there is a weather or news update. According to Cartwright, about 30,000 individuals have downloaded the program; 35% of them use it at work, a fact that the station gathered in a brief demographic form users must complete before they can download it. And though banner advertising in general has been largely discredited, WGME finds advertisers attracted to the specific ˆ and quantifiable ˆ audience for the Desktop Weather program.
At WMTW, viewers can sign up for a daily weather e-mail that provides forecasts down to the level of a specific street address. Hahn says the e-mail has about 7,000 subscribers and has been reasonably popular with advertisers ˆ "Response has been good, but it always can be better," he says. Unlike WGME, WMTW doesn't collect much information from its e-mail subscribers; Hahn says experience has shown that the more questions they ask, the fewer people fill out the form. Besides, getting user demographics isn't the priority for this service, he says, adding, "It's more important to us as a promotional vehicle for our weathercasters and our news products."
With weather cited as the number-one reason viewers choose a particular television station, it's unlikely that the bells and whistles associated with severe weather coverage will decrease anytime soon. In fact, WCSH even offers its own StormCenter emergency car kits for sale. Still, says Michael Young, general manager of WABI 5 in Bangor, "Our fundamental belief is that if we do a good job at covering the news ˆ and weather is a big part of the news ˆ that viewership will follow, and advertising support will follow that."
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