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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.
 

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.

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. 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 would solve 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 his TV viewers. All for a low monthly license fee and a reasonable development cost.

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.

Overall, Brock reports that his Web site has been a 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. Additionally, Brock has doubled his e-mail distribution list in size to more than 3,500 statewide subscribers. 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.