WESH MAKING THE MOST OF HD NEWS DEBUT

If you live in Orlando, Fla., you will soon hear the news if you haven’t already: WESH is going HD on Nov. 1. Hearst-Argyle Television’s NBC affiliate is doing all it can to impress that fact on everyone in DMA 19.

Pretty smart timing, huh?

Not really, says GM Bill Bauman. “We weren’t rushing to get this done in time for sweeps. A conversion like this takes a lot of money and time.”

But the station is taking advantage of the coincidence. WESH has been trumpeting the new and improved picture. “It’s gorgeous,” Bauman says. “Our set looks terrific, our people look terrific, the whole thing pops off the screen.”

In fact, Bauman does expect a jump in the numbers, just not right away. “We’ve done a lot of market research and high def penetration (in Orlando) is already at about 30%.”

Right now, that’s mostly upscale viewers, says Bauman. “But the transition is happening fast.”

On NBC, there’s primetime, football, top golf events and next year the Olympics, he says. “All of those things are going to prompt an awful lot of HD conversion, and we want to be there when people convert.”

The station’s empirical research is supported by personal experience, says Bauman. “I was an early adopter of HD and so were all of our corporate guys at Hearst-Argyle. I know when I watch TV for pleasure the very first place I go is to the HD tier.”

Historically, says Bauman, WESH has been an early adopter of news technology, with a long history of firsts, including Orlando’s first satellite truck, helicopter, and Doppler radar. (Bauman ought to know. At one time he’s been news director of each of Orlando’s top three network affiliates.)

But WESH is not Orlando’s first high-def news station. That honor was claimed in June 2006 by Cox Television’s ABC affiliate, WFTV.

No matter. WESH Creative Services Director Suzanne Grethen (pronounced GRAY-tin.) reports that she still has plenty to promote. “We’re going to be positioning ourselves as the high-definition leader in town. We already provide more high-definition programming than any other station. And when we start broadcasting our news in high def, we’re going to be providing 96 [weekly] hours versus 75 hours from our next closest competitor.”

And that’s exactly the message that debuted on air last week in WESH’s hot new TV campaign.  A message reinforced by a special high-def info page on the WESH Web site, replete with an FAQ list plus videos on how to choose a high-def TV and how best to receive a high-def signal.

Even better, there’s an e-mail hotlink to WESH’s top technologist, says Grethen. “Our Chief Engineer Richard Monn has offered to answer personally every question about high definition from viewers.”

These high-def info features were developed 50-50 by WESH’s in-house Web producers and Internet Broadcasting, which produces most of the Web sites for the Hearst-Argyle stations. This allows WESH to promote its high-def services seamlessly alongside its other digital offerings.

“Heart-Argyle has a very substantial digital division at our headquarters in New York,” says Bauman. “They’re very aggressive in developing new products on new and existing platforms.”

Bauman says that the latest examples were launched just this summer: “High School Playbook is an enormous company-wide digital initiative. We also launched CFLCars.com where we list tens of thousands of automobiles through a network of 38 local car dealers. And we also did an A-List, which is a typical vote-for-your-favorite restaurant, golf course, beauty parlor, etc.”  (Powered by CityVoter, this last service is similar to Hotlist at Fox’s KTTV Los Angeles, which was featured a few weeks ago in MarketShare.)

Bauman says the stations has set high revenue goals for the digital offerings. “They still are small dollars relative to overall broadcast revenue but the digital platforms have already been rewarding, “ he said. “We have enhanced our revenues in an exponential manner and there’s every expectation that we’ll continue to do that.”

And while not yet ready to announce any deals, Bauman says that monetizing high-def programming is definitely on the agenda. “In fact, just 10 minutes ago, my sales manager updated me on conversations we’re having in the marketplace with high-def retailers and with high-def service providers. We’re looking for partnerships on HD. Absolutely.”

Here’s a chance to upconvert your own local efforts into a high-def success story in TVNEWSDAY, where every Monday Market Share by Arthur Greenwald highlights a successful local promotion. And after all, who’s more deserving of national praise than you? Write to Arthur at greenwald@tvnewsday.com.