TORONTO – Are there enough viewers looking for national and international news at 5:30 in the afternoon?
Anchor Kevin Newman (below) and the crew at Global National and Global Television think so. But, when conventional wisdom says that news consumers aren’t home yet at 5:30, Global’s relocation of Global National to a consistent (almost) national time slot which is basically before dinner for working families, the risk isn’t a small one.
Parallels are being drawn to CBC’s attempted re-making of The National into Prime Time News, moving their flagship news show from 10 p.m. to 9 p.m. in November 1992 and failing miserably (long-time CBC TV staffers still shudder at the memory 22-months of lousy ratings and viewer backlash).
But, as Newman says below, that was different times. TV news was different then and the time of day (smack in the middle of prime time entertainment programming) is far different because Global National will face off against Dr. Phil, Ellen and Simpsons reruns and not Must-See-TV.
Global National’s lead-in, Young and the Restless, might say more about who the news program is aiming for than anything.
There is pressure, to be sure. This change (which will probably be much-mentioned at this morning’s CanWest Global investors’ day in Toronto) is a part of the overall rebuilding under way at Global Television. More importantly, though, Global National is now the lead-in to the all-important local news in all major markets, save the Atlantic region.
What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation between Newman and www.cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien last week.
Greg O’Brien: Well, let’s start with current events. Any election surprises, from your point of view?
Kevin Newman: I was a little surprised that (the Conservatives) were shut out of the cities. That will be a challenge. But when I looked at it, I thought it was an interesting dynamic because the classic elites in Canadian society kind of coalesced in the Liberal Party and the Conservatives have become the party of the outsider – the anti-elites.
It’s going to be a cool story to see how it plays out… As usual, the election results reflected the true nature of the country which says there is this great divide and the people who have been outsiders are a little fed up with always being outsiders.
GOB: Well, switching back to the issue at hand, you’re switching to 5:30 p.m. in most markets (Maritimes will be 6:30). What do you see as the major risks in making the switch?
KN: There’s always a risk when you break a pattern. That’s just the way it is in television. But I think the rewards outweigh them and there a couple in nature.
One is, to be able to promote one time slot across this country is incredibly important… we can promote nationally, effectively. And, it also didn’t help that if you had a loyal viewer in Toronto and happened to move to Calgary, they couldn’t necessarily find you easily because we weren’t always on at the same time, like the way Lloyd and Peter are. So this way, Kevin’s at 5:30 – except the Maritimes, 6:30 – we’re a consistent supper-hour newscast across the country for the first time, because we were a late night newscast in the Atlantic.
The second advantage is being the first newscast. One of the things we suffered from was being the final part of a two-hour reel of news in some places – in other places an hour and a half – after the local shows, which were covering national and international news, too – not as well as we do, but still covering it. We were always having to bend over backwards to figure out “how do we make this stuff fresh,” after an hour or hour and a half of news already?
Lloyd and Peter come up after entertainment programming, so they’re fresh right out of the gate. We were always the back of the news wheel.
So this way… our content is fresh. It’s the first time many of our viewers will have heard about the stories we’re talking about. It’ll make for cleaner editorial.
GOB: I was trying to think of the last time there was such a big switch in news show timing and I guess The National springs to mind first when it went from 10 p.m. to 9 p.m. – which didn’t work out very well. A bit of a different time of day, mind you.
KN: Their problem was they collided straight on with the most powerful prime time entertainment programming. At 6:30, we hit them primarily after those other newscasts but now we’re going to be up against the Ellens and Dr. Phils and so on. The beauty of that is we’re going to be the only newscast that’s the alternative to those things. If you want an early start on news, we’re going to have the territory to ourselves.
GOB: For me you’re up against the likes of George Shrinks or whatever other kids programming might be on in my house.
KN: Sure, but the other thing is I think people underestimate or assume that a national news audience are the nine-to-fivers and CEOs and MPs and all the important people in life – and here’s where the anti-elites message resonates for television that there’s a real audience at 5:30. It’s maybe not what you’d associate as a traditional national news audience but it is still an audience that wants national and international news and is currently not being given that in any substantial way.
GOB: So who are they?
KN: They’re shift-workers. They’re people who work in the financial community but are tied into Asia and Europe whose day starts at six and ends at 3. They’re at-home parents. They’re opinion-leaders – a lot of people who don’t leave the office until the commute clears at 6:30 or 7.
The audience is one that is new and hasn’t been assembled around a 5:30 thing before so we’ll see who turns up, but we’ve done enough research and we believe there’s enough potential there that if we supply a good quality product at that time, we’ll be able to build an audience then.
GOB: So there’s enough people at home or in their offices to make this worth your while?
KN: Oh yeah. And they haven’t traditionally been served by a national and international news but there’s a sufficient audience. I think one of the problems that we had at 6:30 in this market and 6 in others is that problem of position. We had to do a really hard job of figuring out "yeah, we know you’ve seen an hour or hour and a half of news, but can you please hang in for another half-hour?"
That was a tough sell. People don’t watch an hour-and-a-half or hour of news and think they somehow haven’t yet gotten the news.
GOB: So, instead you’re asking them to hang in for the local stuff, after you.
KN: What we’ve really done is reinforce the traditional pattern of the local six o’clock news. The truth is that from 6:30 to 7, you’re getting the sports and weather and news you can use stuff – it’s a little easier to sell then than "let’s talk more about the Palestinian election."
GOB: How much updating of the show do you do in those three hours (between 5:30 in Toronto and 5:30 in Vancouver)?
KN: We’ve always updated as needed.
GOB: Depends day-to-day I guess?
KN: It depends on the story. If it hasn’t changed, we don’t update it just because. We keep elements of the show on tape, but what needs to be changed, we change.
GOB: How many skeptics have you had telling you that we’re in an on-demand world now and who cares whether you’re on at 5:30 or 6:30 or 2:30 in the morning – that people get their news on the web, that sort of thing?
KN: The truth of the matter is that era is coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet so what we’re doing is we’re trying to stake real estate in the next era. Global National six months ago was a television show. Today it’s also a podcast. It’s delivering digital content to cell phones. It’s an enhanced web site. Hopefully soon, it’s a video podcast.
None of that stuff is making money yet and it’s still not the primary place that people are getting their news, but because our mission is to try to figure out who the next-generation of national news viewers are, we’re populating the real estate so that when the change comes, as it will come, we have established beachheads on each of those places.
Even in the promotion of the show, Global National is a content thing that can exist and currently exists on five different platforms (and, during the newscasts, www.globalnational.com is promoted by a couple of audible "blings" and a visual reminder that there’s more available on-line).
GOB: I think it was the beginning of last year 50% of the Canadian population still didn’t have Internet access in their homes.
KN: Or high speed. Not everyone has high speed, but we have to be there if one of our missions is to somehow connect younger viewers with national news, more than there are currently.
And we’re growing. People spin numbers but I can say with confidence say that we’re 12% higher(-rated) now that this time last year. The TV stuff isn’t over yet. It is still possible to grow the TV product. But, at the same time, you still have to be looking five years down the road and asking yourself – should we be on iTunes, which we are.
That tells me things are starting to happen. What happens is occasionally we crack the top 25 (in newscast downloads) and once you do that, the advertisers come to the thing and then you’ll have a revenue model.
GOB: I think that those of us who write about the media sometimes look a little too far ahead, rather than what consumers are actually doing. Take, for example, blogs during our election. When I read them, it always seemed to me it was bloggers blogging a limited number of other bloggers and talking amongst themselves with very little input from mainstream Canadians.
KN: Yes, but it’s not going to stay that way. I’ve watched my own kids and the patterns of their news and information consumption – and I can see they want choice. They want to be able to design their own newscast. All that stuff is coming, but they’re not in a position yet where they can drive consumer habits.
GOB: Is there a way to sell Global National to me – because I get most of my information from the web and newspapers or radio. If I’m near the TV I might flip on Newsworld or Newsnet and watch their wheel go by, but I’m not there at 5:30 to sit down and watch a newscast.
KN: Well, what we do is on globalnational.com, the top four stories are there with introductions. We don’t believe people will want to sit down for a webcast, we’re not at that stage yet. But what we do is say "here are four stories we generated tonight." If you didn’t catch us, but still want to be informed, you can (download or stream) a story.
A few of years ago CTV made a mistake in jumping too far ahead by simulcasting everything in video. It didn’t work and they went back to a text-based system.
GOB: How is the news business changing right now, given complaints there’s not enough substance, that it’s often about things that are maybe shocking, but don’t have a lot to do with people’s lives. Often when I come away from watching the local or national news, I feel like the sky is falling, that so many bad things can happen to me. Like if there’s a report on flesh-eating disease in Denmark or whatever, I think "well, that doesn’t really affect me here."
KN: When we conceptualized Global National, we talked about getting into lifestyle issues, or life choice issues – and then September 11th happened. News all of a sudden got a lot more serious after that and the nature of news became a lot more terrifying because there was personal threat and military threat and we see the rise of radical Islamist regimes all over the place. Then the tsunami, then earthquakes, two wars… We’ve been through, in my 30 years in the business, the most intense four years that I’ve ever seen for scary stuff.
The news has seemed more scary because the news is more scary. Our original concept of Global National was not like that. But, we had to move very quickly, because the world became very different – or the events of September 11th revealed to us that the world was scarier than we thought.
Personally, it’s intense for me. I find that I’m delivering so much news that is so cataclysmic so often that it begins to wear down my psyche too. I’d much rather be talking about happy things.
GOB: But what about the more sensational stuff like the woman from Atlanta who ran away from her fiancée just before their marriage and faked her abduction. It was followed ad nauseum by some channels and all it was, was some woman with cold feet leaving a guy at the altar.
KN: Some of that is American.
GOB: But it spills into the newscasts here.
KN: It does a little bit. I like to think we resist some of that (but) if some stories pass the water cooler test of: "Did you hear about this woman who…", they tend to make their way onto the newscast.
But, we do try to resist a lot of it. The funny thing is that your "higher" sense says we really have to drill down on the importance of the Hamas election and what it all means – and then you ask people later what they remember from the newscast and it’s often not that. It’s the missing woman who left her husband. In private television, you’re in the business of having to understand your audience and you can’t just feed them a steady stream of salacious stuff, but if that’s part of the human experience, you can’t just say "that’s not worthy of us."
GOB: Is there much crossover between Global National and the newspapers the company owns?
KN: Where there’s crossover, there’s some cost-sharing with international obligations. For example, we have a reporter at the Kandahar base with our troops in Afghanistan and it’s Chris Wattie from the National Post. We help contribute to his salary and if something happens, we call on that reporter to file for us.
…I’ve written for the National Post. CanWest has done a much better job than anyone else in breaking down the walls and I think it’s because we’re a younger, newer organization, less entrenched in our institutional dogma. I’m perfectly happy having (Post reporter) Stewart Bell on my broadcast because he brings years of experience. And, on their part, they know that not all TV people are about just teeth and hair.
GOB: Have you given any thought to – or feel any pressure about – the fact that as a corporation, Global Television is not where it used to be in terms of (ratings and financial) results. I’ve written about that myself and this Global National change is a big part of the strategy to right the Global TV ship, as it were. Do you feel any additional pressure with that?
KN: Sure. That is the pressure. We’re going to be the lead-in for all the local news now and so if we don’t perform, others will suffer because it’s all about the lead-in. But, we’ve spent five years working on our product and in that time, our ratings are strong, we’ve gotten acceptance from our peers, who now look at us as a competitor – and that wasn’t the case before.
We’ve had a four and a half to five year incubation period to solidify what the broadcast is and what we’re going to do (now) is mature the look of the broadcast and that, in combination with content and new graphics and new music treatment, really will make the thing look whole. I feel good that we’re the best news product that Global puts out and if you believe the idea that you want your strongest brand as a lead-in, then we’re in the right place.
