Video Transcript: What’s New with Satellite Media Tours?
Mike Bako, Vice President, Media and Content Strategy, D S Simon Media
We recently hired a national business development manager who’d been out of the industry for a while, and she was surprised at how much satellite tours have changed since last working in the field. So I thought it would be a good idea for me to share some updated information about satellite media tours in this quick video.
The biggest change has been the significant increase in station interest in booking satellite media tours. 92% of producers we surveyed are open to booking spokespeople for a story through a satellite tour. In fact, 77% of them prefer to speak to an in-house spokesperson than a third-party expert. We’ve actually seen an increase of 12% in bookings when an in-house spokesperson is used compared to a third-party spokesperson.
This increased need for satellite tours isn’t a surprise, given that stations are being forced to do more with fewer resources. More bookings have contributed to the increased demand by brands and nonprofits for satellite media tours. The changes in how satellite media tours can be produced, and how stations can receive the signal, have allowed them to be even more valuable for meeting an organization’s goals than ever before. A key piece to this is the ability to feature multiple spokespeople in the same tour, all connecting remotely to a control room which feeds the video to the stations.
For instance, a Northwest Regional director of an organization could be a spokesperson during a satellite tour when they’re talking to a Seattle or a Portland station, while someone from the South could be the talent for an Atlanta or Birmingham interview. Another change is the increased ability to target specific markets that are of value to the brand. We see saturation tours, where they just focus on a handful of states and cities across the country where their brand has a greater need to reach a specific audience.
In the last ten years, the amount of local news time available for Spanish broadcasts has more than doubled. This has significantly increased the number of bilingual and Spanish language satellite media tours. Our research shows that local TV news is the most trusted source for information. People trust their local news over social media by 85% to 15%. During the past five years, these trends have allowed us to double the number of satellite media tours that we produce on an annual basis. For more information, visit dssimon.com or fill out the form below.