Archive for April 2009
The Worst Job Interview Ever
Five years ago this month I totally choked at a job interview and audition. Good thing I can laugh about it now.
I didn’t have a contract at WREG in Memphis, hadn’t sent out any resumes and had no idea what I was going to do next. I wasn’t doing much except complaining.
My cellphone rang one day and the call was from the news director at the tv station I really wanted to work for in Birmingham. Morning anchor job open, come down for interview and audition next weekend.
The next day, a news director friend in Knoxville called with the exact same opening. Fly in next weekend for an interview and audition.
Teases are Important, Even on Facebook
A reporter friend of mine posted a status update on his personal Facebook page the other day, that is sure to have brought people to his local newscasts that night.
Carson Clark is a bureau chief for WHNT-Newschannel 19 in Huntsville, Alabama. He does a fine job from what I’ve seen of his stories online. Carson has been at WHNT for 10 years now and when his status update popped up on my Facebook page the other day, he even had me wanting to tune in from 150 miles away.
Carson’s status for Monday, posted around noon was this: “Carson Clark has said “newschannel 19″ for the last time. Story at 5.”
Makes it sound like he’s leaving the station and maybe he’s gotten a job so big his own station was going to cover it at 5 o’clock. He wasn’t and it didn’t. But because of that well-written tease, many viewers in the Tennessee Valley tuned in to that 5 o’clock newscast to find out what Carson was talking about.
Carson teased the fact that WHNT is no longer going to use “Newschannel 19″ in its reporter sign-offs. Instead of being known as “Newschannel 19″, WHNT is simply “WHNT News 19″.
By the time that 5pm news went on the air, Carson had nearly 40 comments posted to his status. Jada wrote “Are you moving or staying local?”. Kerri wrote “Tell us, we’re dying to know.” At 4:35, Tina wrote “It’s almost 5 can’t wait to see what’s up!”
TV stations would love to have that kind of free publicity. And get this, 14 of the comments were posted via a mobile device so they didn’t visit the station’s website and didn’t get the tease from tv or anywhere else but Carson’s Facebook page.
Nice work Carson.
BTW, Carson has 396 friends, other anchors and reporters at 19 have friends who do not overlap Carson’s. So the net reach to viewers in the Valley could easily be in the thousands.
But of course, using Facebook and Twitter and any other social media application to bring viewers to the actual tv newscast or any business for that matter, is only as good as…… the tease.
If Google Buys Twitter, What’s to Stop Them?
Word is that Google, the empire, is talking about buying Twitter. Tech Crunch says its heard that negotiations are in late stages.
Twitter turned down an offer from Facebook a few months ago and then Facebook turned around and copied the Twitter interface.
But this is more than users or subscribers or how the home page looks. It’s about Twitter search. Why would Google want to buy a company for its search when billions of computer users around the world think “search” and “google” are the same things? We even say “Let’s google Fran Tarkenton” (of course I may be the first in the world to ever say “google Fran Tarkenton but you get the point.
According to Tech Crunch, Google will pay cash for Twitter.
Cash? A company has cash? I wish they’d use it to buy a tv station group. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Google.tv. A traditional broadcast company that leveraged its resources to become a mobile phone and internet live news operation.
There would be an iPhone app where people could watch news as it happens on their mobile device. By buying a tv station group, Google would have reporters and anchors and cameras and live trucks and helicopters and studios. Sure they could acquire all of that stuff themselves but they could find some real bargains on tv stations right now.
And think of the audience. I’d wager a guess that in five years a live internet broadcast news operation that would be easily accessible (for free) on mobile devices would have a larger audience that the big three networks national newscasts.
Just thinking.
