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March 28, 2024

YouNewsTV Aims to be Local Broadcast’s User-Gen Play

Important Details:  Broadcast website host Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM) has stormed into the era of user-generated content with its new YouNewsTV product, first launched at Buffalo station WKBW in May 2007. The product now powers more than 50 local station user-gen applications. Timur Yarnall, CEO of BIM, says that in total 50,000 people have registered with YouNewsTV affiliates, and that submissions are growing at the rate of 7% weekly.

YouNewsTV is mainly a broadcast-oriented product. Users can submit photos (80% of the submissions to date) or videos, so far heavy on weather, pets and kids. Text blog posts can’t yet be submitted, though Yarnall says that this will be possible within six months. Currently, users can add a notation to a visual submission, or comment on others’ visual submissions. For broadcasters seeking to compete better for local ad dollars, the new citizen submissions mean more (and free) content on the site — and gives them the potential for using the submissions on air. Publishers are familiar with that concept, calling it “reverse publishing.” It’s also possible that the user-gen submissions in some form could be the focal point of on-air programs themselves; think of the various “bloopers” shows that have long been a TV staple as a model.

All submissions are moderated in real-time. Advertising is beginning to be sold on a packaged buy basis, as user-gen traffic builds.

BIM has recently launched YouNewsTV.com, a national site. “We’re ultimately going to be a content exchange,” says Yarnall. “The national website is a step in that.” BIM’s major business has been in powering websites for local broadcasters, which it does in 120 markets. Those websites provide local broadcasters with a content/advertising platform for growth — and to compete better with local newspaper publishers. Yarnall says one deal is in the works with a local newspaper chain to use the YouNewsTV application. The company’s main competitors are WorldNow and Internet Broadcasting, which recently did its own user-gen agreement with community enabler Pluck.

Implications: In a blog post on his site, Yarnall describes the opportunity of becoming a local YouTube, likening it to the way in which craigslist disintermediated local newspaper classifieds. “It is my sincere hope that YouNews can be a key reason why TV broadcasters do not face the same fate (and the same Wall Street valuations) as the newspaper industry is currently facing,” writes Yarnall. That’s well-said.

For all local media, the landscape gets muddier and clearer at the same time. Broadcast and print are no longer two different universes. A new battle is on for local advertising dollars and local readers and viewers (and those two terms are starting to sound increasingly anachronistic in the multimedia age). Interactivity and engagement are major parts of that puzzle. YouNewsTV is in some ways rudimentary, especially to text-oriented newspaper eyes, but the vision of a local YouTube is a powerful one. Eyeballs are still the name of the game on the web, and those eyeballs like to watch pictures.