Local Media in a Web 2.0 World

The Television Bureau of Advertising - Marketing Conference 2008 took place in NYC yesterday. As expected, alot of the conversation focused on how TV can harness the power of local, and the Internet. Note how similar these issues are to what Radio and Newspaper execs are currently dealing with.

Pictured above:President of NBC Local Media; John Wallace, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook, and Gordon Borrell of Borrell Associates

The new battleground is online, and it behooves local media companies to properly leverage their traditional assets in order to build web-based revenue share.

Below are some take-aways from the event, courtesy of  TV Business Report

• Get our LSMs out on the street a whole lot more-if the only time you’re out on call with your AEs is to do rescue missions, you don’t have a clue if they can really sell.”
• Abolish straight commissions. “Many AEs get ‘accidental raises’ because their agency got hot. Stop making “budget the only standard by which we evaluate salespeople. 
• Borrell noted a few common threads for the best-producing local sites and their management: Online only sales staff Non-traditional customer base,  A consultative sales strategy (ask about what they need first then call back with a solution) Lots of sales training and re-training, etc.
• Some Broadcasters are smartly developing local websites that are not branded to the TV stations.

The Gordon Borrell TVB session:   Click here to read more.

Click here to download the latest Borrell report on local TV website opportunities (2008 TVB edition)

The Jim Doyle TVB session:   Click here to read more.