Newswyre Takes Broadcast Journalism to New Heights
The Situation
Roby Brock is the host of Talk Business, a weekly television program airing in central Arkansas that focuses on state business and politics and public affairs. Brock interviews the state’s top business owners for insight on their companies and industries as well as political leaders, such as the Governor or Arkansas.
Talk Business has met with increasing success since its first broadcast in 1999. But its weekly format left viewers with a recap of news they had likely seen on evening news broadcasts or read in daily newspapers that week. Brock wanted Talk Business to be his viewers’ first source for the up-to-the-minute news he collected. What he needed was a way to publish news instantly, inexpensively and without the need to hire extra staff.
Brock said he knew a Web site was the answer. But with a tight operating budget and zero programming skills for managing HTML, he didn’t think taking his company online was possible.
Then Softwyre met with Brock and presented a content management system, called Newswyre, that solved all his problems. Newswyre would allow Brock or his staff to update Web site content on their own without having to learn HTML, and it offered interactive components that would deliver a rich online news experience for Brock’s TV viewers. All for a low monthly license fee and a reasonable development cost.
The Solution
Softwyre designed a Newswyre Web site that addressed his main goals: it allowed Brock to quickly publish content himself and direct more viewers to his TV show. Launched in 2005, TalkBusiness.net contains a Blog (BizBlog) that Roby updates several times a day, E-mail Update Subscriptions, RSS feeds (content syndication), a video library for posting Talk Business TV shows and interviews, and plenty of space for Web ads.
In addition to giving Brock the ability to post breaking news the instant it happens, the Web site provides a great way for Talk Business to package video content for the Web, which is something his competitors weren’t doing two years ago when the site debuted.
“We were the first news Web site in this market to push video content,” Brock said about TalkBusiness.net. He uploads interviews with business people and public figures to a section of the site called “60 Seconds” that comprises hundreds of video interviews featured on Talk Business TV.
Roby said he was a bit hesitant to update his site at first, noting that it took about one week before he was completely comfortable with the content management system. But like any software program, he said, there’s a small learning curve. Now he uses Newswyre daily to post news articles, blog entries, audio and video files to his Web site.
“It’s very user friendly,” Brock said about Newswyre. “I write my copy in a Word document and literally cut and paste into Newswyre, and it’s done. It’s that simple.”
The Results
Overall, Brock reports that his Web site has been profit center, especially in generating advertising revenue and in its interplay with his TV show. Brock uses his TV show to drive viewers to his Web site, and uses his Web site to drive viewers to his TV show. As his Web site traffic increases, ad sales increase online and on TV.
“When we launched two years ago, the TV show drove the content on the site,” he said. But because he can publish news on the Web site the moment it happens instead of waiting until Sunday to air it on television, Brock said TalkBusiness.net has unexpectedly changed the way he plans and markets his TV show. “Now we push content on the Web instantly when it happens,” he said. “The TV show has become much more of a weekly recap of what’s happening on the Web.”
TalkBusiness.net has taken Brock’s political reporting to a new level. When the site launched in 2005, Talk Business was the only news organization other than Associated Press to write news articles from Capitol committee meetings and publish them online the second the votes occurred. For example, Brock said he sat in the State Capitol with his laptop during the Lake View case hearings in the 2007 legislative session, wrote his stories, logged onto Web-based Newswyre and posted breaking news to his Web site before leaving the building.
“People stopped me on my way out of the Capitol and said they read my blog that I had published a few minutes ago,” Brock said. “That was really neat and it’s the way delivering news should be.”
Additionally, Brock has doubled his e-mail distribution list in size since the site launch to more than 3,500 statewide subscribers. And a few dozen new readers subscribe to TalkBusiness.net E-mail Updates each week. Because his TV show airs Sundays nights, Brock developed a mid-week Web site report that he sends to his e-mail distribution list to draw even more Web traffic and attract more advertisers.
During the two years his site has been live, Brock said Softwyre’s responsive staff has been there to support him every step of the way offering professional guidance and attentive customer service.
“If I ever have a problem it gets corrected immediately,” Brock said of Softwyre’s instant response to service calls, adding that he even reached an employee Easter Weekend for help with his site. “Having no down time is critical when people are expecting to get breaking news on my Web site. Softwyre takes great care of me.”
