Proven Leading Practices for Broadcast Media Operations
Broadcast Media Best Practices Guide
Learn MoreUse Multiple Sources for Each News Story to Improve Coverage and Avoid Controversies
Best Practice (Good)
Use more than one source when developing a news story. Do not base a story on a single on-camera interview, particularly if the story is controversial in nature and the facts support more than one viewpoint. This not only reduces controversies and customer attrition, but it also ensures that the broadcasted news story delivers relevant, trustworthy and unbiased information.
Typical Practice (Bad)
Ensure that broadcast media employees are completely focused on meeting deadlines so as to guarantee timely broadcast of the story. A certain amount of corner-cutting should be seen as "the cost of business," even if it means that facts or points-of-view that skew the story are omitted.
Benefits:
While meeting deadlines is important within the broadcast media industry so as to stay competitive (especially with how quickly information is distributed over the Internet), ensuring that each developed news story contains all the facts can be even more important. As such, news stories should contain multiple sources, and/or on-camera interviews to avoid controversies and ensure that the broadcasted story is seen as relevant, unbiased and trustworthy. This is especially important if the news story being developed is controversial in nature and contains facts that support more than one viewpoint since any corner-cutting can cause public outcry and high rates of customer attrition. As a consequence, such dedication to all sides of the story prevents the broadcast media company from experiencing a loss of credibility that can erode advertising dollars over time and harm the bottom line.
Review Live Footage Before Distribution to Improve Broadcast Quality
Best Practice (Good)
Use short delays and ensure that producers or editorial team members review, at least briefly, live footage streamed to the station from breaking-news and live-shot contexts before broadcasting the content. This not only prevents undesirable material (profanity, bloopers, nudity, technical malfunctions, etc.) from making it to the air, but also helps insulate news organizations from costly libel or intentional infliction of emotional distress litigation.
Typical Practice (Bad)
Broadcast live coverage (with little or no delay) with almost no editorial control. This ensures that the news organization conducting the broadcast stays ahead of other media organizations and acquires as high a number of viewers/listeners as possible. The small amount of unwanted material that gets broadcasted should be seen as - "the cost of doing business."
Benefits:
Short delays are used for multiple reasons within the broadcast media industry. For instance, short delays can be used to prevent unwanted material (profanity, nudity, technical malfunctions, etc.) from being broadcast. Longer delays can also be introduced to allow a show to air at the same time, to maximize ratings by airing an event in a certain timeslot, to make the event fit within broadcasting time constraints, or because there was a scheduling conflict. In all cases, and especially during breaking-news and life-shot contexts, short delays allow produces and editorial team members time to, at least briefly, review the footage streamed to the station before validating it for broadcast. This creates a minimum standard of editorial control over live coverage which not only maintains the quality of the broadcast, but also preserves the broadcast company's reputation and helps insulate them from costly libel or intentional infliction of emotional distress litigation.