NAB PSA SITE FALLS SHORT OF PROMISE

Last week at the NAB Show, broadcasting’s premier trade group launched a new service, The NAB Spot Center, designed “to help broadcasters plan and implement locally-focused community service initiatives.”

To advance this noble goal, the NAB Spot Center “provides radio and television stations with public service announcements (PSAs) ranging from the prevention of underage drinking to promoting awareness of the upcoming presidential election.”

Sure enough, the Spot Center’s home page links to downloadable radio PSAs, previews of TV messages plus instructions for getting the broadcast-quality versions. Other links deliver PSA scripts, artwork for print materials, and public service campaign reference materials.

All of this is praiseworthy, but I’m sorry to report that the execution just doesn’t match the good intentions. Two of the three Featured Public Service Campaigns, Code Blue for Lung Cancer and Election 2008, apparently co-produced or commissioned by the NAB, just aren’t very compelling. 

The third featured campaign, Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk, is produced by the Ad Council and has markedly better production values, although several of the bands and celebrities are a bit dated. Even I know that Destiny’s Child broke up. That makes it ancient history for the target audience.

But the biggest problem with these messages comes at the end. None of the PSAs on the Spot Center Web site allow for customized tail graphics or a voiceover that specifically promotes your station.  Instead, each message is generically “…brought to you by (name of charitable group) the National Association of Broadcasters, the Ad Council and this station.”

Now I can understand why the charity and even the Ad Council get top billing. But if your station is providing the airtime, why should the NAB get a mention while you’re relegated to “this station?” In fact, why mention the NAB at all? After all, every time a local broadcaster benefits, the NAB fulfills its mission.

What’s more, the reverse is not always true. The NAB is a first-rate trade organization, but even it is not immune to the delusion that what’s good for the NAB is good for the broadcaster. Witness the NAB Show’s sudden obsession with “content,” as a means of drawing new conference attendees.

Just the word “content” makes real producers cringe. It reduces something special to a generic commodity. People don’t watch “content,” they watch shows and movies and videos just as viewers seek out favorite actors, anchors and reporters as opposed to generic “talent.”

The difference between “content” and good programming is the difference between your station’s branding (call letters and logo) and “this station.” Likewise, a successful public service campaign is more than the sum of its airtime and donations.

In its related Broadcasters Public Service Web page, the NAB quite properly boasts of the “$10.5 billion worth of public service” which radio and TV stations generated for “important community causes” in 2005 alone. That’s an impressive number but sheer tonnage does not make a PSA campaign successful. The campaigns that viewers remember tie an emotional response (sympathy, civic pride) to a clear and practical call to action.

The good news is that Spot Center does contain links to a wide range of excellent PSA’s and related resources, nearly all of them produced by the Ad Council. (To be fair, some Ad Council PSAs are produced in partnership with the NAB, with the Ad Council calling the creative shots.) Other links lead to resource guidebooks, online guides and PSA scripts, all of which could help stations to create their own campaigns, although the present selection is pretty sparse.

Even more encouraging is the box on the Spot Center home page urging stations to “tell us your story.” This links to the NAB’s Broadcasters’ Public Service Page. Right now, about all this offers is an invitation to join the Community Service Tracking System, which helps stations to maintain accurate records of public service activities (no doubt adding to the NAB’s running total of industry-wide largesse).

What’s encouraging about this is its potential to share more than statistics. The NAB should improve its new site by making it much more station-centric. They can do this in three ways:

1) Provide high-quality spots that allow for fully-customizable end tags. Even better, provide separate production elements (music, graphics, footage), which stations can blend with their own on-air look.

2) Create a bulletin board (or even a matchmaking service) that alerts stations to upcoming public service opportunities and resources. For example, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but the annual Revlon Run/Walk for women’s cancer research occurs in May.

3) Alert stations to the pro-social causes adopted by national and local advertisers to which stations can tie in. Examples include Pizza Hut and the Startlight Children’s Foundation, Harley-Davidson and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the General Motors Ten Charity Benefit.

The Spot Center site should also be a place for stations to upload and show off the best of their local PSAs. The NAB’s DTV Answers campaign is very nice. But many locally-produced spots featuring familiar local talent are probably far more effective.

As Fred Allen famously groused about early TV, “Imitation is the sincerest form of television.” When it comes to public service, that’s a good thing.

Market Share by Arthur Greenwald showcases successful local marketing, promotion and sales efforts every Monday in TVNEWSDAY. What is your station doing to grow Web site revenue?  Share your success stories by writing to Arthur at greenwald@tvnewsday.com.