The Danger of Hype in TV Promos   

Promoting upcoming news stories is crucial, but it can backfire when you promise too much.

Promoting upcoming stories in a TV newscast is almost as important nowadays as the content of the newscast itself. Because viewers have more choices in this multichannel era, local news has to do more to attract and retain an audience than simply cover the news. One strategy for stations is to exploit the promotional opportunities on their own air.

Many news directors worry that the tendency to overhype stories could compromise a station's journalistic integrity and, in the process, actually lose viewers.

"It is our nature to excite people, to entice them to watch the product," says Kevin Kelly, news director at WLFL-TV which covers the Raleigh-Durham area. "Sometimes we promise more than we deliver. We've all taken things over the edge at one time. Some people still do. But most viewers won't stand for it anymore."

The promotional message may be a polished video package aired hours or days before a newscast, or simply a short verbal tease read by the news anchor prior to a commercial. The objective is not only to get viewers to watch the newscast but to entice them to stay for the entire 30 or 60 minutes.

"It's critically important to the ratings that you hang on to the people after each commercial break," says Eric Braun, of Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc., a leading TV news consultant. "With a gazillion choices up and down the dial, you want to keep people from grazing and get them to make a mental appointment to watch what you have to offer. That's why teases and promos are so important."

Exaggeration always has been part of TV's promotional style even in news. But with the credibility of local news continually being questioned, the veracity of news promotions is more crucial than ever.

"You always want to draw viewers into the newscast with your promos but you do not want to violate ethical principals in doing so," says John Sears, news director at Portland, Oregon's KPTV. "If you take creative liberties with your promos and teases, what's to convince the viewer that you don't vary from those principles in the story?"

The Magid company has coined a word to describe such viewer reaction – antici-pointment. "A tease that oversells is quite damaging," says Braun. "Getting people to watch your newscast is partly built on enticement but it's also built on trust. Trust is lost when viewers feel they have been tricked."

An increasing number of news directors have final approval for all promotional material involving the news product. This is a major change from the past practices, where traditionally the promotion department had more autonomy.

"I am in charge of news and promotion," says Brian Trauring, vice president of news and operations at WRDW in Augusta, Georgia. "The promos outside the newscast are done by the promotion department and within the newscast by the producers and they are all given guidelines by me."

At WBTV in Charlotte, most of the promotion department personnel have news backgrounds. "Because they came out of news, they are much more aware of the objectivity that needs to be maintained in the promotional material," says Ron Miller, WBTV's vice president and station manager who is also a former news director. "They also know how to talk to the news people and that helps avoid problems. They attend our news meetings and the news manager reviews the promotional material. It's beneficial all the way around."

But even when the news director and promotion department are in sync there may be a temptation to hype for the ratings. Andrea McCarren quit her reporter-anchor job at Washington, D.C.'s WUSA last May in a dispute over the on-air promotion of her three-part series on eating disorders. She says the promotion "bordered on tabloid journalism."

McCarren, a 10-year TV news veteran, objected to a promotion that emphasized death rather than recovery from the serious medical and mental aspects of the problem. She also complained about the title for the series – "Are You Killing Yourself?" She says her criticism helped kill a bizarre graphic that she says showed "a smashed fat person with a fork in each side."

No one at the station will make an official comment about McCarren's contention. Both the general manager and news director have left the station since the incident occurred, although there is no indication that McCarren's public quarrel with management over this issue was a contributing factor.

"I didn't do the series as a sleazy ratings ploy and I didn't want the promotion of the series to be sleazy either," says McCarren, now a part time reporter at cross-town WJLA. "My sources trusted me to do the series the right way and I would have been failing them and the people who watch us if I had not complained." l