The Planning Diary - Week of September 20th
My weekly newsletter straight from the heart of the ITV News Newsroom to help Comms and PR professionals understand the upcoming news agenda.
Happy Monday!
This is my last Planning Diary newsletter before I depart ITV News. Below I have collated all of my Insider’s Tips. My Planning Diary legacy if you will.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my weekly meanderings, the people who have emailed me with pitches, story suggestions and expert names.
Although I haven’t been able to apply to each email, I have appreciated each and every one.
I hope my tips prove useful and help you pitch to journalists with success.
Thanks so much!
Carol x
Insider’s Tips!!!
Insider’s Top Tip 1: Which Outlet?:
TV takes a while to make and depending on your story, it could take days to plan, film and edit. Then one of the things planners like me always need to wrestle with is scheduling the rollout of exclusives or pre-filmed pieces.
If you want TV News coverage think about pitching your story to broadcasts several weeks in advance, even if you don’t know full details yourself yet but there’s no harm in testing the waters.
Also, have a think about whether it’s worth offering your story to one broadcaster on an exclusive basis which could mean a better TV treatment and arguably more of an impact or whether you want to engage with several bulletins. If it feels like there’s a natural home for your story, or a particular bulletin has the audience that you want to target, sometimes less can be better and focussing on that one outlet can be more effective in terms of impact.
Remember broadcast exclusives are just that, broadcast. You can still take your stories to print, radio and Digital.
Insider’s Top Tip 2: Subject Line:
Have you thought about about the Subject Line of your email pitch? It’s a topic I’ve spoken about before and it might seem incredibly banal but it’s often the one part of the pitch which makes the difference between me reading down an email or consigning it to the Deleted Items folder.
The subject line should include three things:
Personalisation: Who is the pitch directed to? By including the name of my outlet, I get the sense that you have thought about the pitch and whether it works for ITV News (or whoever you’re pitching to).
Story: What is the story? Pretty self-explanatory but often people tend to put their client’s name first especially if they are offering an expert voice. Don’t waste those precious words with the name because unless they are a celebrity or household name, chances are I won’t know them so better to include the topic instead.
Offer: What are you offering? Expert Voice? Filming opportunity? Case Study? Exclusive research (love the word exclusive!)?
So it should work out something like this:
For ITV News: Coronavirus: Exclusive research on Long Covid
or
For ITV News: Collapse of Nightclub Industry: Industry Body Expert Available
It’s worth thinking about that subject line as it could be make or break for your pitch.
Insider’s Top Tip 3: Human Interest and Relatability:
When planning content for a national news broadcaster, firstly the stories have to be topical (actual news…not a plug for a product or company) and secondly, they have to be relatable.
The best way of making these films relevant is by putting people at the heart of the story. So if you’re pitching any story, client or filming opportunity, it’s worth thinking about how your pitch translates to a national audience. Basically, will people care? How will this impact their lives? Why should they be made aware of whatever it is that you are trying to get on TV?
And do you have case studies? Do you know of people who are happy to be filmed? More on the specifics of case studies next week but for TV news broadcasters who turn stories around quickly, having case studies available can instantly sway a decision.
Insider’s Top Tip 4: Case Studies:
If you’re trying to get your story, research, issue onto television news bulletins, offering a case study will improve your chances but there are a few things to remember.
Is your case study authentic? Has he/she/they a powerful first-hand account of the issue that you might be trying to highlight and will that come across on TV?
Is your case study a good talker? Might sound banal but this person will need to share their story in a compelling and open fashion.
Do you only have one case study? Fine if you’re only targeting one outlet but NOTHING is as annoying as filming with a case study and then seeing the exact same person on your competitor’s bulletin. This happens a LOT. We will always ask for our own case study so if you want to get on all the channels, best to have more than one.
Insider’s Top Tip 5: Timing and Coordination!
No. I’m not talking about sport. I’m talking about your pitches. This Insiders Tip stems from a conversation with a colleague who also works in planning. She maintained that 95% of the pitches she receives get binned or deleted because they come at the wrong time and sometimes en masse.
On Planning desks, we work to future stories. We don’t care what spokesman X has said about something which has happened today or which is breaking news. In particular, we don’t want to see that same email sent to us by four different people from the same Comms office.
If you have a spokesperson on a story that you know if coming up, don’t wait, send it through to Planning desks. Planners will be glad to look at it if it about an upcoming story.
If it’s not a future story but an on the day one, find the news desk’s email address and send it there. Also, co-ordination which means only one person from your office sends the pitch to any one media outlet would be really welcome.
It sounds so simple but it is something which happens a LOT.
Insider’s Top Tip 6: 24 Hour vs Network News!
I have often spoken about how you should tailor your pitch to different media outlets but often I get asked about the differences between what network news wants and how that differs to 24 hour news?
My answer is this. Put simply, both outlets want great stories but 24 hour news has well…24 hours to fill. For 24 hour news, bulletins are not just filled with TV packages or VTs but also guest segments and discussions. So Comms people with spokespeople or experts to pitch often find that they have much more success when they pitch to 24 hour news outlets.
When it comes to network news like ITV, the difficulty for us is that we have restricted time. For ITV, our three bulletins are only 25 - 30 minutes long and need to be filled with mainly hard news so in many respects it’s much harder for Comms people to get pick up from us. The upside though is that audience figures tend to be higher for network news so clearly from a PR perspective the reward is greater if you can get your guest or story on.
The lesson is that when pitching to network news bulletins, ensure what you are pitching is a hard news story, a positive uplifting story (always looking for those) or a guest/expert who can be used within the context of a news package or guest segment.
Insider’s Top Tip 7: National v Regional Outlets:
Having examined the differences between 24 hour and network news channels, now I want to tackle the differences between national and regional news.
Producing national content is trickier than it sounds. Traditionally some of UK media has been accused of being London-centric, not something ITV News signs up to. With national news, you have got to ensure that our content is as relevant to Simon on the Isles of Scilly as it is to Naomi in Norwich.
When you pitch to the national news outlets, the important thing to remember is whether your story either lends itself to a national news story or whether it’s major enough to engage viewers across the country. Often the pitches I receive feel very local and probably would do quite well with regional outlets.
The trick is to link your pitch to a bigger picture national news story and see if you can entice an outlet from there.
Otherwise pitch to a regional broadcaster. At times reaching a more localized audience is more beneficial for your story / product / expert than not getting any pick up at all with a nation outlet.
Insider’s Top Tip 8: Diversity:
I want to tackle the issue of diversity. A couple of months ago a Linked In contact shared a photo of a screen shot of a well-known breakfast TV show showing a shared screen populated by 4 white males. The contact called out the programme for its lack of diversity and certainly that’s what the optics pointed to.
Make no mistake. Broadcasters want diversity and rightly so. But what is true diversity? For those of you choosing individuals to train up as spokespeople, diversity goes beyond the obvious boundaries of ethnicity or gender.
When setting up a panel discussion, any producer worth their salt will be looking for diversity of opinion. A group of people saying the same thing does not make good TV.
Then we will want to look for different voices to tell the story; be that a case study, an expert, a participant in a panel. So yes, is there a female? Is the best person to speak on this topic someone from a minority ethnic background but equally, is the subject someone from outside of London? Are they LGBT+? Does that person have an visible or hidden disability which makes them more informed on the topic?
Diversity comes in many forms and even 4 white men can represent diversity in some respect. But striving for different, yet informed voices to represent your businesses, NGOs or charities, helps us to represent society as a whole.
Insider’s Top Tip 9: Know Your Audience:
Everyday I receive dozens of pitches and sifting through them can be time consuming. One of the things that I look for is whether the story is broad enough or big enough to appeal to a national audience.
When you are preparing to pitch to a media outlet, do you think of their audience? Not the size but what that audience looks like? Pitches that are most likely to stand out are pitches that will provide stories that appeal to the target audience of that media outlet.
For instance, some of the pitches that I receive are quite good stories but feel very local or regional news. Therefore, those pitches will be deleted.
Do you think about the target audience of your desired outlet? Doing so might mean you have to tweak or invest a little more time in your pitch, but it could pay dividends.
Insider’s Top Tip 10 Robust Research!
Media outlets love getting their hands on new research and surveys (especially when it’s exclusive) but part of our job is to scrutinise the research to ensure that it is significant enough, particularly if it’s being featured on a national outlet.
The things that we look at are sample size, the make up of the respondents, the division in opinion, undecided respondents etc.
This info is incredibly important especially when ascertaining whether a survey or poll is actually newsworthy or whether it’s simply PR.
The smallest sample size which I consider is 2000 respondents which is an industry average. The integrity of the findings is also key and I always look to see who conducted the survey. Was it independent? And the more info I have about the respondents the better.
The headline can be great but like all good journalists, I like to dig beneath the surface.
Insider’s Top Tip 11: Campaigns and Clarity!
Sometimes we get offered big name guests which are really tempting. But often they come attached to a certain campaign or representing a commercial company.
Unlike magazine shows, news bulletins have a responsibility not to be seen to be plugging a particular company, either verbally or visually. So featuring a guest in front of company branding is always something we would avoid. Talking solely about a certain company, if it’s not for a legitimate news reason, again is something, not least for Ofcom reasons, that we would avoid.
Clarity and transparency is always key on these occasions. If you have a big name client but that person is attached to a campaign, always flag it to the media outlet. It may not mean that your guest won’t get exposure on news programmes but it is necessary to point it out.
If you’re client is 100% locked into a certain campaign and brand names need to be mentioned, then realistically it will be difficult for any news outlet to feature that issue.
Insider’s Top Tip 12: Spam Alert
In this week’s Insider’s Tip I want to tackle the issue of the spam approach.
I receive a lot of email pitches everyday and clearly I’m on a lot of PR and Comms professionals email lists. However, there are some companies who have got hold of my email address and send me several emails each day.
It’s completely counter-productive. As soon as I see the company’s name on the top of the email, I assume it’s more spam and into the junk folder it goes.
It really pays to tailor those pitches and sending endless emails which are not even tailored to that journalist’s platform is more likely to create ire than desire!
Insider’s Top Tip 13: Survey Size!
This is something I have written about before but for some news stories, Size Matters!
I’m always being sent pitches asking ITV News to report on the findings of surveys and polls which on the face of it come with a solid headline.
But I always scrutinize the data and often things are not quite as they should be.
For a national outlet, the sample size ought to be at least 2,000 respondents.
This is a minimum and the only exception will be if the survey asks a particular section of the community a specific question which only they could answer. For instance if you were running a survey of people with hearing issues, then it’s likely there would be a lower number of people canvassed.
However, most of the time, 2,000 is the minimum number and obviously for some generic polls, that number needs to be even higher.
Insider’s Top Tip 14: Be Specific!
I get a lot of reactive press releases detailing expert commentary on breaking news. Today for instance, I have received a raft of press releases connected to the IPCC report.
However, what makes me press the delete button is a lack of information about what is on offer. Is it just a quotable comment from an expert? Useful if I’m writing for print or digital. Not massively helpful when making TV, even for scripting purposes as we would use onscreen experts for that type of analysis.
If the subject line in the email isn’t specific and it doesn’t clearly state that this person is being offered up for on camera interview then I’m afraid it’s unlikely to be considered.
So if you are pitching an expert voice or your client, give them a fighting chance of getting on air and Be Specific!
Insider’s Top Tip 15: Call Me!
Newsgathering is a 24 hour operation and doesn’t stop at the weekend.
If a story breaks over the weekend, unless it’s absolutely massive and warrants a Day 2 or Day 3, then waiting until the Monday morning to make your pitch often means that you miss the boat.
Obviously not every company, agency or organisation has a weekend comms team but if you do see a big breaking news story that has broken on a Saturday or Sunday, coming to it on a Monday probably won’t pay a lot of dividends.
So in terms of dedicating time and resources to react to a weekend story, it really has to be a big one to still resonate on a Monday so the success rate of any pitch will be much slimmer than normal.
That’s it for now!
Thanks for reading!
Carol x