Television and Cable

If the print news release is still the bread and butter of public relations techniques, getting your organization's story on television is the peanut butter and jelly.

Partly it's because of the numbers: an article in a print medium may reach up to 5 or 10 million readers in the most popular magazines, but get a 30-second exposure on a network news program or a morning talk-news show, and your "reach" may be as many as 50 million people. Similarly, a local newspaper may reach 100,000, but the evening news show in the same area may reach half a million or more.

A mention in print is nice, but a mention on the tube is exciting. Reading a newspaper is work, and the more educated members of society are willing to do that work. But many target publics—especially those for marketing public relations campaigns and campaigns involving public issues such as health—prefer to receive and process information the effortless and entertaining way, by watching the television set.

Messages seen on television bring instant public recognition, and with it very often comes approval of an idea or program.

the importance of television to their successful campaigns:

• McDonald's responded to attacks for not having environmentally safe products by launching its "McRecycle USA" campaign to create markets for recycled materials. In addition to mailing video releases to television stations, the firm's public relations agency set up satellite interviews so television reporters could question McDonald's executives.

• The Royal Melbourne Hospital in Parkville, Australia, brought in a film crew to shoot scenes in the emergency room and intensive care unit showing what happened to victims of drinking-and-driving automobile accidents. When the footage was prepared as a 60-second television spot, commercial stations were so im­pressed with the impact of the message aimed at young drivers.

• When Coca-Cola used an ice-skating robot to publicize its in­volvement with the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games, it re­leased two television film clips, which were carried by 136 television stations in 119 cities for a total of 214 telecasts that reached a projected 37 million households. A twenty-three-city tour by the robot attracted further coverage: 125 minutes of television time, reaching an audience of 30 million.

• When an Air Force Academy cadet was selected to chaperone a Colorado competitor in the International Special Olympics, the service academy's public affairs office assigned a PR prac­titioner full-time to assist ABC in preparing a television fea­ture on the relationship between the cadet host and the handicapped athlete. The human-interest angle was a major part of the network's nationwide coverage of the event on its popular "Wide World of Sports."

By the beginning of the 1990s, video news releases (VNRs) were gaining dramatically in usage. They typically are 30-second to 5-minute video tapes that a television station can show, in whole or part, to provide visual information in stories put together by their reporters.

The tightening of budgets for television reporting has led to in­creased use of VNRs—and to the growth of the agencies that specialize in producing them for clients.

Medialink—which acts as a go-between serving public relations people whose organizations have a story to tell and television or cable stations that need material—advises its clients to make the best use of the service by observing several requirements:

• The perishability of a story and its uniqueness may lead you to choose live transmission instead of taped and edited footage. Press conferences are of interest to broadcast media because of their immediacy.

• High-speed teleprinters installed and serviced by the Associ­ated Press alert newsroom decision makers to new information and advise them on how to get access to it.

• Stories with a national focus have the best chance of being used by a great number of outlets, but you can use the newswire to alert local media to special angles and tie-ins that may be of in­terest to their viewers.

• VNRs must be educational, entertaining, and interesting. They should be truthful and should not obscure bad news. Most im­portant, VNRs must be clearly identified as public relations material. Identification must include the source of production, and the name of the sponsor of the VNR.

• VNRs should be produced to be edited. That is, the client should not expect that the entire VNR will be used by all outlets, but rather that some footage will be used.

• Production values must conform to broadcast news standards and should have legitimate news value; they should not be com­mercials packaged to look like news.

• News producers should be given the choice of using an an­nouncer provided by the sponsor or their own announcer. To fa­cilitate that option, either two versions should be provided, or two sound tracks should be laid on one visual image—"natural" sound as well as announcer mixed with natural sound.