News surge in times of crisis. But will it last beyond the current state? Here are some challenges that news organization and #TVNews in particular face.
The consumption of #news has grown dramatically during the pandemic. People look for reliable information. They want to get an understanding of what is going on and need help to find orientation in uncertain circumstances. News will stay for good but faces challenges through the way news are consumed nowadays and how they are distributed. This is especially true for TV News.
The streaming world is both a challenge and an opportunity for TVNews. It opens up the possibility to be distributed everywhere where your audience is – and the audience expects just this. A TV news organization needs to make its content available through different formats and devices.
Prime-Time is when your audience decides it. The times of the big evening news are gone. People consume news throughout the day. You do not have time nor the leisure to prepare your news segment with great detail and patience for your main news show in the evening. You must report news as they happen and in formats that might be snippets only. For this, you need the technology and most of all, the editorial skills to do so.
Authenticity is the new currency of trust. When you report news as they happen, you probably need to take the risk of not knowing all in detail. Take them on the journey instead of discovering with you how you learn more about the the news as the story develops. Show them that you struggle to understand all and, yet, that you make the best effort to get all information compiled. Show them that you are human.
Bridging generations. A significant turn in news consumption could be witnessed during the pandemic. Traditionally only older people were watching news. Now younger people did so too. This is a major opportunity for news organization to find new audiences by catering to younger demographics. And yet, they have still to satisfy their legacy audiences. Bringing them different formats and streams might help to resolve and bridging this gap
Build a pool of individual talent rather than bots and large organization. Latest research shows that younger demographics trust more in individuals and not so much into organizations. This is exemplified by the success of so called #influencers . Importantly though, these individuals have to be seen as independent. As soon as they been considered as part of a (traditional) organization, they loose their followers’ trust. For news organization it means to nurture such talent or collaborate with such influencers without bogarting them.
