The FCC recently signaled the possibility of localism mandates and many broadcasters are looking to address that possibility ASAP—especially smaller independent stations without a news crew. Bottom line–not every television station can create localized content that spans multiple dayparts. Too often the available resources are already stretched way too thin. What to do? “The Daily Buzz,” a five-years and running, fresh, topical and somewhat offbeat morning news show produced distributed nationally by ACME Communications has added set roll-over segments twice each hour that allow stations to insert a live or taped local segment.
COO Doug Gealy tells TVBR: “We don’t know what the FCC’s localism mandate is going to look like at this point. Knowing the FCC, it’s probably going to be a certain amount of hours per week. Stations can use the localized breaks and localized weather to build up enough time across a five day a week, three- or two-hour a day show and at the same time drive revenue and have news for an inexpensive way to localize. This is great for a lot of stations that don’t have news, like The CW or MyNetwork TV affiliates. Our stations tell us this is the most talked about show in their markets, because people think it’s the local show.”
Stations can use a portion of that time for local sponsorship as well. If they’ve not yet produced content to insert, The Daily Buzz says it will fill the time with content on the days needed.
For several months now The Daily Buzz has also given affiliates a free daily “Buzz Brief” that is used to sell sponsored news nuggets outside the actual telecast of the daily show.
