It Takes More Than Luck to Lift a TV Station

Photo: WFMY News 2

If you live around Greensboro, N.C., you are getting really familiar with Julie Luck, the new evening anchor for WFMY, a local CBS affiliate. That's because the station decided to lease a number of highway billboards to tout its new addition.

By playing off catchy sayings – "As Luck Would Have It" for instance – and displaying super-sized images of the anchor's smiling face, the station is hoping to build awareness of the overhaul of its evening lineup. Last fall, Luck left Fox 8 WGHP after more than seven years, leaving a station where she had anchored several afternoon and evening newscasts.

By my estimates, WFMY must have invested a handsome sum on the Julie Luck promotion.

I have counted roughly 10 billboards, both traditional and digital, on major thoroughfares across Greensboro. Based on an estimated price of $2,500 per month for traditional signage and $3,500 for a digital bulletin, the station may have spent $25,000 or more to promote Luck.

(If anyone has a better estimate, please feel free to post in the comments section below.)

"Julie Luck has received no small amount of promotion," Larry Audas, WFMY's president and general manager stated in a recent Facebook post. That may actually be an understatement.

This is evolving into a fascinating intersection between marketing and organizational behavior, where you have to balance a desire to build a brand around a new addition with maintaining a healthy workplace built around a news team.

It makes me wonder if WFMY will be able to get a solid and sustainable return on its investment. Having worked in the radio industry, I generally understand how the system works. The billboards draw attention to Luck and/or stories she is working on. That awareness prompts people switch from Fox 8 to WFMY. Those viewers help the station in the periodic Nielsen sweeps, which are then used by sales teams to encourage businesses to advertise.

But, as the title of this post states, it takes more than Luck to lift a TV station. This strategy would have been a no brainer a decade ago, but the rise of cable news and Internet programming is changing the math. Ad spending on broadcast networks is projected to drop 2% this year compared to a year earlier, according to Bloomberg. Total TV advertising, including cable, is on a pace to increase nearly 3% compared to 2012.

Technology such as tablets and smartphones make it easier to access online news, possibly deemphasizing the relevance of traditional local newscasts. Still, as my significant other Vaishali Shah puts it, having a marketing campaign built around a single personality could help WFMY differentiate from other TV stations, newspapers and other groups putting video online. It could help with Internet searches; typing "Julie Luck" into Google points people to WFMY much better than a generic search for "local Greensboro news."

WFMY is also taking a risk putting so much marketing behind Luck. Most, but not all, of the billboards around Greensboro feature her exclusively. That could upset other members of the team. It could give Luck undue influence in negotiating future contracts, salaries, etc.

An overreliance on one individual could also create a ratings vacuum for the station should she leave, another point that Vaishali made as we passed several billboards this afternoon. If people are willing to switch to WFMY to watch Julie Luck, they are equally apt to switch off if she exits. Brand loyalty in television isn't the same as it was back in the 1960's to 1980's when people were accustomed to Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and the local anchors who were on a half hour before the national broadcasts.

What about the OB perspective? This campaign can also influence WFMY's ability to building a strong team. They must make sure that the ads do not upset the delicate balance of such a team. In the sports world, GMs must be mindful about hiring free agents who fit into the system rather than those that clash and cause distractions. I'm not saying that Julie Luck will purposefully cause a distraction, though there is a serious risk that a highly leveraged billboard campaign could chip away at an intended level of cohesiveness.

To his credit, I think Audas seems mindful of that. Luck "asked for none of" the promotion, Audas writes in his Facebook post.

"That's our doing," Audas adds. "What she has asked for, over and again, is a collective station commitment to see that Frank (Mickens), Tanya (Rivera) and the whole WFMY News 2 team win by serving. She has it. They have it."

Still, I will be curious to see how the team chemistry holds up over time. I believe this will serve as an interesting case study in the months to come.