REICH COMMUNICATIONS

What We Do: Safest Summer Ever

Every summer, teen car crashes and deaths spike.  An average of 9 teens die on the roads every day during the summer months. 

The National Road Safety Foundation, along with SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), is making a push to put safe driving on the minds of teens this summer, to help make this the safest summer ever.

In addition to a massive social media campaign involving tens of thousands of SADD students nationwide, we're doing a virtual media tour.  Along with my associate Michelle Anderson at The National Road Safety Foundation, we're doing remote interviews with TV stations nationwide.

Click here to see one Michelle did with a station in Lansing yesterday.  I did some in Hartford and Providence Tuesday, and I'm about to go on with the NBC station in San Antonio in a few minutes. 

We have more lined up with stations in Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Toledo and more as we're trying to get teens -- and all drivers -- to slow down, pay attention and always buckle up.

 

What We Do: Distracted Driving Awareness Month Virtual Tour

For The National Road Safety Foundation, we're mounting a virtual media tour to talk about the dangers of distraction during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

I was the spokesperson yesterday, as we kicked off the tour with two TV interviews in Tennessee and Minnesota.

Here's a clip from the segment that aired last night and this morning on KAAL-TV ABC in Rochester, Minnesota.  I'm thrilled to see that the 8-1/2 minute story began with some comments from Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, talking about distracted driving.  She's been a vocal supporter of tougher distracted driving legislation since back in 2010, when I met her at the first National Distracted Driving Summit convened by then-Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood.

Lots more to come during the next two weeks.  Stay tuned

30 Seconds...Flush...$7 Million Gone

 

NBC announced this week that it has sold all its inventory of commercial spots for this year's Super Bowl.  Some advertisers spent as much as $7 million for a single 30-second ad.    

Yes, it's true that the game and all the hoopla that surrounds it gets big audiences.  And some of the ads get talked about and shown and re-shown online. But I wonder how many people actually see the ads. 

Commercial breaks are when many people make a run to the kitchen or a run to the bathroom.  Who stays to watch a 2- or 3-minute commercial break?  And of you do watch, how many actually remember any specific ad or who sponsored it.

I wonder what else might a business do with $7 million?  Lower prices?  Pay employees more?  Put some into programs that benefit people in need?

Just sayin'.

 

  

 

Lou Grant

 

Safest Summer Ever

 

The period between Memorial Day and Labor Day is traditionally the most dangerous time for teen drivers, with a 21 percent spike in teen traffic fatalities. 

Traffic safety officials often refer to it as “the 100 deadliest days.”

On behalf of client The National Road Safety Foundation, I'm working again this year with the leaders and student leaders of SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) to help make this “The Safest Summer Ever.”  The two groups are mounting a massive social media campaign to call attention to a range of safe driving issues from distracted and drowsy driving, as well as many other driving skills.  The campaign will have different safe driving messages posted on social media every week, with those posts amplified by shares and re-posts by SADD chapters and tens of thousands of SADD members nationwide. 

“We’re mobilizing the tens of thousands of student safety advocates in the SADD community at the middle school, high school and college level to help spread important safe driving messages to peers, friends and family,” said SADD President and CEO Rick Birt.  “We hope to make this the safest summer ever, not only for teens on the road, but for all drivers and passengers.”  

Part of the effort is media outreach.  We're arranging for TV interviews nationwide, using SADD student leaders and, in some cases, myself and my colleague at NRSF, Michelle Anderson.

 

Here are links to two stories that aired on newscasts yesterday in Missouri and Wisconsin.  And there's lots more to come.

WXOW-TV   ABC 19    LaCrosse/Green Bay WI   

KSNF-TV   NBC   16    Joplin MO    

 

 

 

Whither the king's ratings?

 

The opening night of the Republican National Convention was down in the ratings by nearly 30 percent compared to 2016, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with nearly 3 million fewer viewers than the audience of the first night of the Democrats’ national convention a week ago.

Across the six major commercial networks carrying coverage at 10 p.m. ET — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — the Republican convention averaged 15.84 million viewers. The RNC's opening night four years ago drew 22.53 million.

The first night of the Democratic gathering a week ago drew 18.69 million people across the six channels, down 28 percent compared to 2016.

Are some Republicans tiring of the president’s negative and hateful rhetoric? 

What We Do: Virtual Media Tour Gets Results

The quarantine during the pandemic has put up some tough new challenges to get PR clients into the news.

It's also opened some new opportunities, as shown by a virtual media tour we've been doing for The National Road Safety Foundation (NRSF). 

With Bob Thomas Productions, we've arranged virtual interviews via Skype and Zoom with 19 TV stations in markets ranging from smaller places like Joplin, Missouri to top markets including Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Cleveland, Nashville and Jacksonville... with more to come.

Here are two typical news segments -- Click to see spots from the CBS station in Cleveland and the CBS outlet in Bakersfield, Calif.

In normal times, Skype interviews would rarely be acceptable for most TV stations because of picture and sound quality and reliability.  But now we're accustomed to seeing interview guests and even reporters and anchors broadcasting from their living rooms and kitchens. 

Hopefully, whenever things get back to "normal," stations will continue to take interviews via the internet rather than the more costly and time-consuming traditional methods -- traveling cross-country for in-studio interviews or doing spots via costly satellite feeds.

For now, it's working nicely for us.

 

 

 

 

 

What We Do: Virtual Media Tour

 

Producing a TV media tour is usually a time-consuming and costly PR tool.

Traditionally, a media tour requires that a spokeseperson either travel to multiple cities to do interviews in-studio at each TV station or else sit in a studio to do a series of back-to-back interviews with stations by satellite. The city-by-city tour requires a good amount of time and travel, and a satellite tour is quite expensive to produce because of satellite time charges and studio rental.  And few major market stations normally take satellite interviews unless the guest is an extremely high-profile or in-demand person.

But during this pandemic, we've become accustomed to seeing TV anchors, reporters and interview guests appear via Skype from their homes, without the usual top-quality studio cameras, lighting and backdrops. 

So we thought perhaps this could work for our client, The National Road Safety Foundation, which wouldn't normally use one of the traditional media tour methods. 

We're in the process now of producing a ten-market TV media tour, to talk about teen summer driving, which always sees a spike in crashes and fatalities during the summer months. In fact, the traffic safety community refers to the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day as "the 100 deadliest days."

With an assist Bob Thomas Productions, we have NRSF spokesperson Michelle Anderson virtually "visiting" at least ten markets to do live or taped interviews, getting across important messages about teen driver safety and the role parents can play in keeping their young people safe behind the wheel.

The first spot will air live Monday morning on "The Morning Show" on WXIX-TV, FOX 19 in Cincinnati, followed on Tuesday by a taped interview with the ABC station in Johnson City/Knoxville in Tennessee, with several more in the works throughout the nation.

Will this become a "new normal" even after the pandemic has passed or will we go back to the high broadcast-quality standards of TV interviews?  Time will tell, but some creativity and flexibility is working for us and our client at the moment. 

Cookie!

 

My daughter Jen told me today is the birthday of a special friend -- Cookie Monster.

Cookie was one of my favorites when I used to watch "Sesame Street" with Jen when she was little, and then a few years later, with our son Michael.  I used to make them laugh when I'd imitate the furry blue guy by saying, in a gruff vice, "Me want cookie." 

But I knew Cookie long before my kids watched him.

Although no one seems to know how old Cookie is, he's been on TV for 50 years, since "Sesame Street" first went on the air in 1969. 

My friendship with Cookie began shortly after that, in the spring of 1970.  I was working on my Master's thesis.  I had books and note cards spread out on the living room floor, as I as trying to piece the thing together.  One afternoon, at around 4, I decided to take a break.  I turned the TV on and .  It was set on Channel 13 (PBS) and a kids' show was on.  I was about to change the channel, but I got caught up by the puppets and the cleverness of the fast-paced show.  I got hooked.

For the rest of the spring, I'd push my thesis notes aside every day at 4 o'clock to watch "Sesame Street."  Cookie and Big Bird were (and are) my favorite characters.  I like Big Bird for his innocence and sweetness and consideration for the feelings of others.  I identified with Cookie Monster because I, too, like to eat -- cookies and almost everything else.

So happy birthday, Cookie Monster.  Have a cookie...or two.

 

 

Emmy Awards recognize the "new" TV

Regardless of whether you liked the awards telecast or not, the The Emmy Awards again put the spotlight on how much TV has changed over the 20+ years.

First, take a look at which networks won the most awards...   Most winners by network: HBO, 34; Netflix, 27; Amazon, 15; National Geographic, 8; NBC, 7; CNN, 5; FX, 5; CBS, 4; Fox, 4; Hulu, 4; VH1, 4; YouTube, 4.

One of the major broadcast networks -- ABC -- got only one Emmy Sunday night.  And the four broadcast networks combined took home only 16 awards -- less than half of what HBO won.

But the big news is how many awards the streaming networks got -- Netflix, Amazon, Hulu.  (Who even heard of Hulu five years ago?)  The streamers dominated the awards.

Don't cry for the networks, though.  Even if they don't dominate the awards anymore, they're still pulling big audiences and even bigger ad dollars.  Broadcast TV isn't going to disappear, although the focus on the subscription (HBO and Showtime) and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon is forcing the broadcast nets to up their game in terms of program quality.  They're not just lowest common denominator programming anymore.

I can remember when top film actors and directors wouldn't go near TV.  But not anymore - not for a long time.  TV programs now feature big screen stars like Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda. 

TV (if you include all the ways programs get onto your TV screen) has come so far from the time in 1961 when FCC Commissioner Newton Minnow called it a "vast wasteland."  TV now seems to be in a new golden age, which is good for all of us.