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Casual viewers might not have noticed, but from November 2014 until Easter, KVII in Amarillo, Texas, was broadcasting from the station’s garage.
Why? The long-neglected station was undergoing a complete — and much needed — makeover courtesy of its new owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which purchased KVII in late 2013.
As excited as General Manager Thom Pritz was about Sinclair’s investment, he knew it wouldn’t be quick or easy.
“We needed a new roof before we could start installing millions of dollars worth of new equipment.”
Priorities were determined, plans were made, and a new set—with the help of Devlin Design Group—was built.
“It wasn’t just a new set and graphics. It was a new master control, a new production control,” explains Ryan Hazelwood, KVII news director. “We went from a set — and technology —that hadn’t changed from the late 80s, early 90s, to a state-of-the-art facility both behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera.”
Before the upgrade, their graphics systems were running Windows95.
“We had to go to eBay to find graphics cards,” says Daniel Sontag, KVII creative and promotions director. “If one more went out, we would have been off air. That’s literally the shape we were in before Sinclair bought us.”
Teaching the crew to use modern equipment meant numerous training sessions and two-and-a-half months of 80-hour workdays divided between broadcasting from the garage and rehearsing in the new studio.
With everything else being overhauled, it was an ideal time to reevaluate the 40-year-old ProNews 7 brand.
“We’d been a very fractured brand for a number of years: ProNews 7, KVII, Channel 7, 7 ABC, The Panhandle Spirit, etcetera, so simplifying it was exciting for everyone involved,” says Pritz, admitting he was initially a bit hesitant about dropping the ProNews brand.
After considerable discussion, the decision was made to transition ProNews into ABC 7, better aligning KVII with its network.
“Adopting and personalizing it with our Panhandle Spirit made the most sense,” Pritz says. “’ABC 7 News: The Panhandle Spirit’ is a brand we can own.”
Sontag worked with Sinclair’s graphics team to refine the new designs and logo, opting for the iconic “circle 7” favored by prominent affiliates around the country.
“Then we started phasing out ProNews,” Hazelwood says. “It wasn’t like all the sudden one day we flipped the switch. We did a social media campaign and promos to build excitement for things to come.”
One hitch: they couldn’t confirm a launch date until the crew was proficient with the new equipment, so promos needed to be a bit vague.
“We were able to tease the new set during the six-month period we were in the garage,” says Sontag, who made time-lapse promos of the old set coming down and the new one being built, without revealing too much of the new look. “Once we had a definitive date, we started hard-teasing: It’s finally here. It’s finally arrived. We’re ready to go.”
With the bulk of the budget going to facility improvements and technology upgrades, Sontag relied on social media to promote the rebrand, using #ABC7upgrade to foreshadow the coming changes. It was so gradual, he says no one really noticed when they changed the station’s Facebook name and profile picture.
“We’d been teasing for six months that we were becoming ABC 7 without really telling viewers that’s what we were going to become,” Sontag says.
Unscripted promos of anchors explaining what The Panhandle Spirit means to them reassured the audience that KVII’s core brand and commitment to community would remain unchanged.
Once the rebranded ABC 7 News debuted April 6, Sontag says a digital campaign kicked in, utilizing tracking advertising and YouTube pre-roll ads to reinforce the new brand as visitors click from the station’s website to other sites.
“Viewer response has been overwhelming,” Pritz says. “This is a look and feel like nothing else in the market. It makes us very proud to be part of the Sinclair family and the Panhandle of Texas, Oklahoma and eastern New Mexico.”
Sinclair Broadcast Group will be joined by the country’s top station groups to learn about best practices in marketing and promotion at the PromaxBDA Station Summit at The Mirage in Las Vegas June 23-26, 2015. Come join us and follow the conversation at the PromaxBDA Group LinkedIn page or on Twitter @StationSummit.
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