Some local Television, Radio and Newspaper companies are getting smart. These forward thinking broadcast and print companies are developing niche, content specific, as well as aggregation sites. This strategy offers advertisers a focused environment, that hopefully, they would want to place their brands within.
Example of this strategy in the Radio space: ToastedRav.com. Named after a regional delicacy, Bonneville Radio in St. Louis understood that cluttered station sites are of little interest to most advertisers, as well as avid listeners. Instead of building a typical site for each of their 5 stations in town, they built a local entertainment and info portal, that was supported by all 5 stations. To see more about how Bonneville Radio executed this idea, click here.
Want to see what a typical, WEAK radio website looks like? Click here to see the cluttered WXTU site, from Beasley Broadcasting in Philadelphia.
In TV land, NBC steps up with their new take on the local portal concept. This time, without the help of Internet Broadcasting; IBS. See press release here. In this iteration, they dump much of the irrelevant TV marketing stuff like anchorman pictures in the header, and overt TV promotional fluff. Instead, they go with a collection of local content, from in-house producers as well as the local competitors. This is smart. See the NBC CHICAGO example here.
Newspapers like The Morning Call in Suburban Philadelphia have recently rolled out beta versions of LehighValleyTraffic.com and LVBrideandGroom.com. In addition to their Metromix entertainment offering, these local niche sites allow the paper to offer advertisers a clean, focused environment for their marketing messages.
Up next, is a look at their revenue plan. Can these well known local brands translate increased user traffic into cash ?
