A local news show doesn’t capture repeat viewers with its content but with its connections. From the personalities of the broadcasters to the incorporation of real-time social media comments, the goal is to make the viewer feel like a vital part of the programming. When they do feel that way, they stick around.

Global weather content provider AccuWeather figured that out a while ago, and has been expanding its offerings far beyond the realm of the meteorological ever since, aiming to bring local stations, as the company’s website puts it, “the tools you need to add impact to your message, to differentiate yourself in the minds of your audience, and to keep them coming back for more.”

The flagship product in this growing line of tools is AccuWeather’s StoryTeller Interactive Touchscreen System, a robust suite of touchscreen hardware and scalable software whose main function is to turn the on-air content into interactive content – for both the on-air anchors and for the viewers who are watching them. Whether that entails manipulating content during taping by iPad-style tapping and swiping of giant touchscreens, or incorporating viewers’ social media commentary in real time, the results “respond to the way today’s tech-savvy population wants to receive information,” says AccuWeather.

Storyteller’s many features are powered by apps, including options such as the Storyteller AlertID Crime App, which lets newsrooms access data from communications between citizens and law enforcement, as well as federal, state and local authorities; and the aptly titled Social Media App, which integrates text and images, plus new video feeds and hashtag searches from top social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more. AccuWeather recently upgraded the system to make downloading apps as “fast and easy as adding new apps to a smartphone.”

“Social Media has provided newsrooms with an unprecedented ability to integrate on-location and up-to-the minute user contributed content with breaking news stories,” said Ryan Ayres, VP of display systems and services for AccuWeather. “The enhanced StoryTeller Social Media app makes importing, sorting and screening social images, comments, and now even video and hashtags, a seamless part of interactive news presentations.”

And that addition narrows the gap between the news program and the news viewer, but widens the potential to form connections that last. “We were seeking the same personalized, conversational immediacy and interaction that two friends experience when they sit down across a table with their laptop or tablet between them,” reads the company’s website, reflecting on the system’s creation. “StoryTeller delivers on that goal.”

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