SECURING BROADCAST COVERAGE: NAVIGATING THE NEW LANDSCAPE

WHAT’S THE STORY?

When it comes to broadcast, there’s a few initial things you can tick a box with straight away. Firstly, it’s essential to know what makes for a good story across television and radio.

Stories work over stunts and events. As fun and visual as stunts may be, they don’t necessarily work for broadcast. Similarly, if you’re looking to publicise an event, it’s essential to create supporting talking points to not only emphasise the importance of the event itself but help fill airtime.

And while it’s not every brands preference to highlight the negative, raising awareness of issues tends to get more traction than positive stories while also allowing them to be part of the discussion around potential solutions.

DOORSTEP LOCAL

Pivoting is crucial to any successful broadcast PR campaign. Today there are fewer places to take content to for a radio day in particular, due to the brutal cuts over the last few years.

Bauer started axing its regional stations – replacing them with a national network under Greatest Hits Radio and Hits Radio brands; BBC announced cuts to its local radio stations leaving only breakfast and lunchtime programmes for each of the 39 stations – with remaining shows syndicated regionally and later moving to the Networked Late Show before switching to BBC 5 Live; and Global followed suit by announcing it was to scrap all local and regional shows on Heart, Smooth and Capital brands in England.

What this means is that local content is more important than ever for breakfast, lunch and news output – be that local voices and case studies or localised data. But if you get this right, you can reap the rewards with higher levels of coverage than before.

SPOKESPEOPLE

Another essential element to any successful broadcast PR campaign is your spokesperson. The 50:50 The Equality Project employed by the BBC supports increasing the number of women represented – so why not consider a female expert who could potentially tip the scales when it comes to national coverage? Ethnicity and disability representation is also a focal point on air as well.  

When booking talent, it’s important to do your due diligence. It’s worth checking when potential spokespeople last did the rounds and ensure they’ve not got media tours leading up to your campaign as well as the days and weeks following as some programmes work on a strict rotation policy so won’t have the same talent twice on the show over a certain period. Consider whether they are associated with programmes and shows from other networks. With more and more reality TV stars moonlighting on the airways, other networks are less inclined to want to speak to them.

KNOW WHERE YOUR CONTENT LIVES

The most important thing you need to do before you even start approaching planning desks is understanding where your story lives! Quite often clients come to us with The One Show, Woman’s Hour or Capital FM in mind, but the content or guest isn’t quite right for their output.

Capital is geared towards a younger audience and recent guests range from superstars like Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx, artists Billie Eilish, Haysley and Perrie Edwards through to Iain Sterling chatting about Love Island – so you’d be hard pushed to get a guest on flagship shows. But… if it is a strong enough news story that relates to its audience, you might land a nib on national and regional news bulletins.

Despite the name, it isn’t a given that you’ll get a story on Woman’s Hour simply because you have a female talking head. The programme covers a broad range of conversations impacting women’s lives; from misogyny in the workplace; the realities of motherhood; through to teenage exploitation and women’s rights in Afghanistan. A PR story with a female slant or guest isn’t always enough to make the cut.

LEAD TIMES

Lead times for broadcast programmes vary depending on the type of content and whether it’s live, pre-recorded, or syndicated. Media lead times help you determine when best to pitch a producer or journalist and can range upwards of 6 weeks for magazine shows like The One Show through to 1 week and even 1 hour for rolling news.

BREAKING NEWS

Securing coverage in a busy news agenda can be challenging, and none more so than across broadcast. Whether you’re looking to news jack big events, or choose to take a wide berth entirely, forward planning can improve your chances of landing coverage. However, even the best laid plans can come undone by the time the alarm goes off in the morning. Breaking news happens, and geopolitical events are bound to dominate headlines.  If your story does get dropped, dust yourself off and try again to see if it’s possible to shift to another date.

FLEXIBILITY IS KEY

These days great broadcast coverage doesn’t always land on one day neatly wrapped up by lunch time so being prepared to change plans at the drop of a hat is paramount. We’re increasingly seeing requests from journos for pre-recorded interviews in the week leading up to and post launch, but also late in the evening and weekends. Find out when spokespeople are available and whether they’re willing to do late night chat shows or expert slots on different weeks. If there’s a big enough op – are you willing to break the embargo? Flexibility really is the name of the game to allow you to snatch success from the jaws of defeat.