There’s good reason for TV stations to be focused on free ad-supported television (FAST) channels and other digital platforms — they have become a rapidly growing business.

“In the aggregate, FAST channels have generated $7.3 billion this year and that’s projected to grow to $34 billion in 2027 amidst a rising tide of consumer usage and a rising tide of monetization that’s complementary to local,” said Greg Morrow, GM of ViewNexa by BitCentral.

“The numbers for FAST for news content are off the charts,” said Rick Young, SVP, head of global products, LTN. “The numbers show that half the FAST channels out there are news and half of the viewing time [on those channels] is news. That’s massive. And the more real-time, the more live the content is on those channels, the more demographics that you want will find them, whether they are male or younger.”

While CBS started implementing FAST and digital streaming in 2014, it’s only been within the last three-to-five years that most local station groups have gotten their live-streaming operations off the ground with services such as Fox’s LiveNow, Gray’s Local News Live and CBS’ local news apps. The relative newness of these services means that they are still in experimental and iterative phases.

“We look at the minute-by-minute concurrence when we’re evaluating the success of the streams,” said Sahand Sepehrina, SVP, streaming, CBS News & Stations. “We see that the local audience comes in about one to one half hours earlier than the national audience. Because of that, we have invested heavily in mornings. Now we have nearly 100 hours of live newscasts that are streaming exclusively in the mornings. We’ve seen that drive new audiences so as we’re starting to look at other day parts, we’re getting a lot smarter about what content we invest in.”

Viewers tend to turn to live streaming news when big events are happening. The longer the events go on, the more viewers tune in and stick around, stations are finding.

“We have found that live events really start to pick up an audience after the first hour. When we invested in live events that ran an hour to two hours, the ROI wasn’t nearly as strong as live events that were much longer,” Sepehrina said.

Gray launched its Local News Live product out of Omaha, Neb., in 2020 and then moved it to Washington, D.C. The group quickly realized that it needed to be live and streaming as much as possible and that there’s an appetite for local news coverage, even for people who don’t live in that market.

“We always want to be live. Our research and traffic have shown that engagement was so high when we were live that we really never want to go dark,” said Mike Braun, SVP, digital media, Gray Television.

In addition, viewers are more interested in watching stories from other markets than Gray expected: “It’s not only where you are, it’s where you’ve been and where you are going,” Braun said.

Three live-streaming strategies that BitCentral’s Morrow has found to be successful for local stations are first, to put up weather and traffic cameras that viewers return to often.

Second, stations are seeing success programming “hyperlocal” sports, such as high school, junior college and local second-tier professional leagues.

“The most successful thing we’ve seen on that front is working with the state associations on state championships, which are concentrated tournaments that take place over a period of days in sports like hockey and football,” Morrow said. “These get huge amounts of traffic and there are sponsorship opportunities. We are talking live content with huge tune-in times. People tune in all day long to watch, and it draws audiences outside of the local community.”

Third is programming a host-driven, vlogging style of content, like viewers find on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, which is something the Fox Television Stations have done both on their local-news streams and on their streaming news service, LiveNow. LiveNow has digital journalists, or DJs, who create their own content on the fly, although they are supported by producers.

“They choose the shots, they talk about the content as it’s happening, they are just constantly just managing everything,” said Jeff Zellmer, SVP, digital operations, Fox Television Stations. “They have to have that passion, they have to have that stamina, but they also feel really empowered.”

Allowing talent to stay in constant touch with the audience creates a relationship that keeps viewers coming back.

“This is about having a dialogue with the audience about local issues,” Morrow said. “We saw when a station added that component to their local broadcast, they saw lift, engagement and recurring tune-in.”

That tune-in extends past the typical local news audience of older adults to younger millennial and Gen-Z consumers.

“What we are finding in the digital or FAST world is that the audience is younger and more male-skewing than we might have imagined,” said LTN’s Young.

Another advantage of live streaming is that journalists can spend as much or as little time as they want on certain topics.

“There’s the freedom to talk for 10 minutes if there’s a reason to do that. Journalists are eager to talk about things they didn’t cover in a one-minute package,” Zellmer said. “We are watching the data constantly. We absolutely pay attention to the viewer. We wouldn’t be doing what we are doing if we didn’t see that it was growing over time.”

Fox is not only watching the data closely — it’s allowing viewers to watch closely as well. LiveNow includes a graphic in the left corner that tracks how many people are watching at any given time. “It gives the DJ immediate feedback of whether people are interested in what he or she is doing,” Zellmer said.

It’s all leading to a time in the not-too-distant future, where TV stations’ linear and digital offerings are all just one part of a larger content offering and aren’t considered to be distinct products, Young said.

“It’s no longer a world of traditional versus digital,” he added. “The audience is everywhere. The numbers are equal in terms of engagement and new opportunities on old and new platforms. It’s a ‘yes and’ strategy for everybody now going forward.”

Read more coverage of NewsTECHForum 2023 here.

Watch this session and all the NewsTECHForum 2023 videos here.

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A panel of top streaming executives at major station groups will address these and other crucial questions in a session, Reassessing the Streaming News Content Strategy, at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum conference on Dec. 12 at the New York Hilton. They’ll discuss how data and technology are facilitating decision making and how deep audiences’ appetites for experimentation run when watching news content on streaming.

Speakers are Mike Braun, SVP, digital media, Gray Television; Greg Morrow, GM of ViewNexa, Bitcentral; Sahand Sepehrnia, SVP, streaming, CBS News & Stations; Rick Young, SVP, head of global products, LTN; and Jeff Zellmer, SVP digital operations, Fox Television Stations. Michael Depp, chief content officer, NewsCheckMedia and editor, TVNewsCheck, will moderate the discussion.

“The sands of news content on streaming are shifting extremely quickly, and what’s behind that is years of data now available since news organizations first launched their streaming channels,” Depp said. “This panel will dive into the data and the insights it has illuminated on consumer behavior when watching streaming news content, including on emerging FAST channels.

“We couldn’t have a deeper bench of experts to crack open this subject,” he said, “and the stakes couldn’t be higher in terms of acquiring the next generation of viewers to keep local news operations alive and thriving.”

NewsTECHForum, now in its 10^th year, is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit. The conference’s theme for 2023 is Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis.

Featured sessions are:

• Keynote: Democracy, Technology, TV Journalism and the 2024 Election
• Building the Architecture of More Collaborative Content Creation
• Harvesting the Archive for New Content and Opportunities
• Adapting to a Culture of Continuous Crisis
• Agility in News Production
• Chasing AI: Threatening or Enhancing the News?

Register here.

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“Centralizing that very difficult and time-consuming discipline of data analysis makes good business sense, from an investigative journalist standpoint,” said John Kelly, director of data journalism, ABC Owned Television Stations. In addition to the contamination investigation, his group has delved into the numbers to uncover revelations about other thorny topics, such as police stop-and-search records and COVID testing.

Kelly made his remarks at a TVNewsCheck TV2025 conference panel session on joint news efforts between local station journalists and national news enterprises. During the session, which took place last Wednesday, the panelists revealed other examples of what they’ve accomplished, along with insights into the collaborative process and their learning curves.

The E.W. Scripps Co. has been undergoing a massive overhaul of its news operation, evolving a national news unit that works in tandem with local stations. “One of the end results of that is a significantly larger group of journalists on the street than we’ve had,” said Dean Littleton, SVP, local media at Scripps.

In Lafayette, La., Scripps is in the middle of the transition right now, moving from four reporters to more than a dozen, Littleton noted.

To handle the much more bountiful array of stories and ideas, Scripps has a tool in place that allows Scripps newsrooms to see what everyone is producing and planning. And there is greater communication between people locally and nationally, which has allowed Scripps to plan more effectively for coverage of hot issues — like the elimination of Title 42, which had held back immigration at the southern border during COVID.

“If there are six reporters involved, each one has a different angle. As a viewer at home, your experience is much more rich and robust than before,” Littleton said.

Fox focused on ease and simplicity when building up a collaborative effort between its Live Now streaming news service and local outlets, said Jeff Zellmer, SVP, digital operations at Fox Television Stations. The effort involved visiting stations to understand what tools they were using and making the approach more organized.

“Then, it’s all about ‘How do we make sure they care?’” Zellmer said, speaking of the local reporters. “At each station we have what we call our Live Now champions. There’s one person at a news station who communicates with our EPs.”

Sinclair’s The National Desk, which airs on about 70 of the company’s stations in two- and five-hour blocks, was built from the ground up. “We work with Avid to create a content bank, so all our assets are in one spot,” said Scott Livingston, SVP of news. “So, if I’m in Seattle or Washington or Baltimore, I can take a look at all my content that exists across Sinclair. We’ve also created a plug-in with Masstech that allows us to archive material.”

Ray Thompson, Avid’s senior director, partners and alliances, described a number of tools that allow news operations to work more quickly and collaboratively. One that’s grown out of the demand is called, appropriately, Collaborate. When stories are assigned, “it allows you to aggregate all the content that goes along with that story, and then track it as the story evolves,” Thompson said. “That allows everyone to be much more efficient.”

Nexstar Media Group is able to more deeply tap into what’s going on in Washington, D.C., through two of the company’s acquisitions: The Hill, and the Media General stations, which gave the company a D.C. bureau.

In addition to calling on journalists at The Hill to provide insights for station news reports, Nexstar also does some polls with the outlet. Last year there were about 45 of them.

Since absorbing Media General, the Nexstar D.C. bureau has doubled in size to nearly 20 people. It typically brings in 40-45 feeds, which are then spun back out to the TV stations, said Jerry Walsh, the company’s SVP of local content development. “We’re now set up so that [government] hearings can be streamed live on all our platforms if digital producers want them.” And stations also have the opportunity to localize the content.

Needless to say, there have been lessons learned as all of the collaborations have gathered momentum. Sinclair’s Livingston explained that the company’s newsrooms understood the reasons why The National Desk was rolling out. “But the breakdown was in the training,” he said. “We realized that the workforce needed to be really comfortable, not just with the concept, but we assumed some things— [for example] that people would know how to use Avid or Masstech. So, we added a couple of positions to train the workforce.”

At Nexstar, there was a realization that the company needed to make sure there was a proper support structure for the teams, and that they took the time to build up the procedures, Walsh said. What’s more, there’s a greater focus on understanding the unique strengths of different journalists and what they can bring to the table.

“Change management is hard for anybody,” noted Scripps’ Littleton. “I’ve been blown away with the employees’ ability to understand the ‘why.’ The issue has been more about connecting the ‘why’ to what they do and how it changes what their job looks like and their responsibilities.”

After working with people at a station, those in charge of the training can’t just move on to the next station and assume everything will be OK. “As [station personnel] advance, they run into speed bumps. So, you have to listen and adjust based on where they are,” Littleton said.

Read more coverage of TV2025 here.

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Steph Reikofski

Viewers are looking for live and local content over streaming services, and broadcasters are making it easier than ever for their audiences to find them, participants said during the “Building and Expanding Audiences” panel of TVNewsCheck’s Streaming News 2021 on Wednesday. The overall user experience remains top-of-mind, but streaming is making it possible for broadcasters to experiment with content in ways they haven’t been able to with linear.

Broadcasters who aren’t streaming on platforms that people are visiting daily “are going to be left behind,” said Steph Reikofski, senior director, digital integrations and OTT for Gray Television.

As Jeff Zellmer, VP digital marketing and strategic partnerships for Fox Owned Stations, put it: “They expect us to be there.”

And when they come looking for news, Reikofski said, “we need to give them a reason to stay.”

As such, Gray is focusing on 24/7 live streaming channels, she said.

During a recent trial, Gray’s WOIO Cleveland, Ohio, experimented with “swim lanes” or content lanes in OTT apps. One lesson they learned, Reikofski said, is that being more selective about what content was made available, rather than providing every clip that existed, made it easier for viewers to find content.

Additionally, overall findability of a broadcaster’s streaming options is also critical, panelists said.

Jeff Zellmer

“It’s important to be on the home screen on smart TVs” because it makes choosing that broadcaster’s streaming service simple, Zellmer said. “If they turn on the TV and see what they want, click it and watch, they’re going to do it.”

Yet broadcasters are selective about where they want their content.

For instance, Susanne Mei, SVP, CBS News Digital, said, CBS licenses its livestream and clips in a CBS News Playlist, but won’t license clips to aggregators because of the brand risk.

Susanne Mei

As Jon Accarrino, executive director, business development, Bonneville Salt Lake/KSL put it: “The last thing we want is our investigative journalism to be sandwiched between pieces of sponsored content.”

And the experience a viewer has on a streaming app can keep them tuned in or clicking away to a different app.

Accarrino said that when KSL launched its connected TV and mobile apps, it decided to focus solely on the video experience.

“There are no text articles on [KSL-TV’s] connected TV or mobile apps for three reasons,” Accarrino said. First, users spend more time engaged with the app when they’re watching than when they’re reading. Second, video ads drive higher revenues, and third, the user experience is clean and familiar, he said.

Jon Accarrino

“We’ve stuck with that since we launched, and it’s been really good for us and our audience,” Accarrino said.

KSL has increased its audience for the streaming apps through scalable partnerships such as a deal that allowed KSL to stream Major League Soccer Real Salt Lake games in its apps.

“We’ve replicated that over and over,” he said.

Now, KSL streams college games and more than 1,500 high school sports games across Utah, which means millions of viewers. Basically, he said, “any household with high school sports players will download and watch” games on the KSL app.

While covering those games is “a massive undertaking,” it benefits the station financially and is helping grow KSL’s audience, he said.

And having audiences use the app is where the real opportunity is, according to Mei. When someone downloads the app, there’s a “closer relationship, you can engage with them more,” she said. “A direct relationship with the consumer is 10 times more valuable than having to go through fuboTV.”

Knowing what viewers want on a certain platform can help drive engagement, Mei added. For example, they have learned that CBS streaming viewers appreciate a seven-minute interview over a two-minute interview.

“They are looking for depth, not opinions and yelling and fighting, but real information from real experts,” Mei said.

CBS News Digital is also using push alerts to keep viewers engaged with content.

“It keeps showing them things they might be interested in,” she said of the notification that appears on the upper right corner for a few minutes during a video. “The goal is to keep them in the ecosystem.”

While content the users want is part of what prompts them to seek out additional content, so is the overall user experience. But some of that is beyond the broadcaster’s control.

“It could come down to your technology infrastructure or the average connection available in your market,” Accarrino said.

For example, rural markets may have more trouble accessing high-quality streaming. But the technology partners a broadcaster works with are a significant factor, he said. “You want to have that strong infrastructure and don’t cheap out on your partner.”

With strong streaming infrastructure in place, the streaming world makes it possible to experiment. This is a big difference from traditional TV, as broadcasters have been “notorious for not taking risks,” Zellmer said.

“By targeting this very focused audience, we can listen to them more closely and be more flexible,” he said. “We can pivot, adjust and change faster than we were ever able to do in the broadcast space.”

And that experimentation is paying off with the niche Fox Soul streaming product, which has seen a 30% increase in viewership this year, he said.

At the same time, sometimes content doesn’t perform as well as expected, which can be disappointing, he said.

Mei said that if the content is great, poor numbers can be because of a flawed rollout promo.

“Is it the content or how we put it out into the world in all the ways we know that drives engagement?” Mei said. “Look at the things that work and don’t work.”

And what consistently works?

“Free and easy are what users are going for,” Zellmer said.

Read another Streaming News 2021 story here.

Watch TVN’s Streaming News 2021 panels here.

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