Membership at a local TV Station? A Profile of KSAT-TV

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/10/m...s-ksat-is-plotting-a-potential-revenue-stream

That’s part of why the Table Stakes program — known as team strategy coaching for legacy newspapers started by the Knight Foundation — has included local TV news at the table for the past year, as chronicled by the Cronkite News Lab. KSAT, a Graham Media Group-owned ABC affiliate in San Antonio, has used the opportunity to explore what membership at a local TV station could look like, the first record of such across the Membership Puzzle Project’s 163-example database.

(The other stations involved: Scripps’ KGTV in San Diego, WXTV Univision-41 in New York, Gray’s WBRC in Birmingham, ABC’s WLSTV in Chicago, Morgan Murphy’s KXLY in Spokane, Scripps’ KNXV in Phoenix, NPG’s KMIZ in Columbia, and Gray’s KPLC in Louisiana.)

“Our overall opportunity lies in audience engagement, and really being the voice of our community, but also the ears of our community,” said KSAT news director Bernice Kearney, who has been at the station for 25 years. “We have been the legacy station for 22, 23 years, so we know we can’t just rest on our laurels or assume that will always be the case. We have to continually work with our audience to make sure they love us later as much as they love us now.”

Over the yearlong Table Stakes challenge that ended in June 2019 (round 2 for local TV just started with eight stations), Kearney, general manager Phil Lane, and Graham chief innovation officer Catherine Badalamente developed the strategy and budget for what has become KSAT Insiders. “It makes sense on paper right now,” Lane said. “It’s an ROI we’re comfortable with. We like the relationship piece of it. It fits our culture and I think it’s a good direction for a TV station as we all become more and more local.”

Part of this is about the long term reforms coming to TV news though.