There are those in the advertising industry who scoff, nay bray, at the supposed decline of local TV stations. I don’t believe this to be true. The power of local TV is in its localness—its ability to connect and unite communities. The best example of this is the reaction of TV viewers to traumatic events. Last fall, TV viewing increased during Hurricane Sandy in the East Coast markets. The same phenomenon happened during the horrible tornadoes in May in Oklahoma. The chart below shows what happened to TV viewing levels in Oklahoma City the day the storm hit, compared to the same day a week before.

Source: Rentrak
Viewing levels on Monday, May 20, were higher starting around 8 a.m. and leapt up when the storm hit at approximately 3 p.m. The aftermath of the storm continued to bring in high viewership as people tuned in to understand more about what had happened. The chart below shows viewing levels the day after the storm, along with levels for the same day of the week prior. Viewing was up throughout the day.
This increase in viewing went disproportionately to the broadcast stations in the market. As the table below shows, HUT levels increased on the day of the storm by an average of 18 percent. However, the share of viewing to the major broadcast affiliates went up by 58 percent.

This is not to say that cable news viewing did not go up as well—it did. But local TV news is still the dominant place to which the public turns in times of crisis. Brevity being the soul of wit, I have not included the results for Wichita and Sherman. But the results are the same, increase in HUTs during the storm, and a disproportionate increase for broadcast stations.

As an aside, I believe that advertising is about storytelling. Marketers are telling stories about their brands. And any storyteller wants to tell her story in a place where the listener is disposed to be trusting and attentive. Local TV clearly is that sort of place.

Bruce Goerlich is chief research officer at Rentrak, the global standard in movie measurement and a TV Everywhere measurement and research company.

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