How do you go about getting television coverage of your area? The obvious way of course is to buy the time, which in some markets would be cost-prohibitive and in others an excellent buy. But for now, let’s look at the other alternatives, namely free air time. We can divide free air time into two catagories: News releases and features.
News releases are generally short in length, one to four minutes, and they are normally of local interest. News clips can give your resort good exposure in a prime time situation. And you have the low cost of thousands of impressions for a few hundred dollars.
News clips can be produced by the local station, by your own photographer, if you have one, or by a film production company or freelance photographer. If an event or story is newsworthy enough and your area is located fairly close to a metropolitan area, chances are the television stations themselves will send a crew to cover the story. If not contract with a production company or photographer to cover it for you.
Advance planning is a must. Get in touch with the station’s news director well in advance. Don’t wait until the last minute; if you do, you can expect the old excuse, “Gee, if we’d known about it sooner we could have sent up a photographer or held the time open.”
Have stock footage available showing an aerial view of the area, location of the lifts, lodges, ski school, etc. Slow motion footage is also helpful to add some excitement. Many times after coming back to the station, the film crew finds it forgot to get some very basic location shots and needs the additional footage to help with the location of the area. Give the photographers the footage before the event. It may save them some shooting. A 16mm print from an internegative would be the best as this puts the emulsion on the same side of the film as the original they will be using. This will insure proper focus.
Once you have made the contacts, what is news that is acceptable for television coverage? You probably have more than you think. You don’t need a World Cup race every week to get good TV coverage. Put yourself in the TV programmers position. What kind of programming would you use to attract and hold audiences? Remember basic publicity principles. A press release on film is much like a press release on paper and the opportunities are similar.
Stage an event. When you’re talking about thousands of viewers for a peanuts budget, it could be worth your while to create the news just so you can cover it. Stevens Pass, Wash. as an example, held a golf tournament on skis for ski instructors in April. The result was a busy spring day and over two minutes of airtime with a viewership of nearly 50,000 persons on one station. The cost? A few trophies.
The free use of your feature film production on television can often times get your story across to more people than any other media. There are more than 900 on-the-air broadcast TV stations. Approximately 700 of them are commercial and 220 educational. The number of TV homes in the U.S. is more than 96 percent. Over half of these homes have color receivers and that percentage is increasing daily.
A glance at the list of most popular films, shows that travel and sports, as you would expect, score the best. A ski resort of course falls into both catagories.
Running time is important in getting your film used. Most stations prefer fillers, or quarter hour films as well as a half hour program. But a half hour program is not 30 minutes long. Commercial breaks are necessary, so a film that is 25 minutes, 45 seconds is the most acceptable length. Thirteen minutes is right for a quarter hour film.
If your film is entertaining, it will be used. The matter of commercialism is certainly something to think about, but nothing to be afraid of. In fact you can get a good bit of “sell” into your TV film, but keep it low key. If your film is in good taste and entertaining, no one can object.
The mechanics of distribution is the key to getting your film on the air. The best method is to get your film on a syndicated ski series such as “SKI WEST” or AMERICAN SKI SCENE”. One new print will produce air time on over 50 TV stations in the prime ski markets with a viewing audience in the millions.
Another excellent method for distribution is to contract with a film distribution company such as Modern Talking Picture Service. They will handle all the distribution and charge you a fee for every time the film is used. The cost is very reasonable. The Park City Ski Resort as an example, was featured on SKI WEST and over a period of 2 seasons, their film was telecast on 50 stations. The film was also distributed by Modern Talking Picture Service with 64 telecasts. These 114 telecasts brought a viewership in the millions.
Names and addresses of firms that can help in television distribution and TV film production:
Fred Nelson, Producer of SKI WEST
Know Productions, Inc.
1003 Lenora St.
Seattle, Wash. 98121
(206) 682-6931
Don Herrick, Producer of AMERICAN SKI SCENE
TV Sports Scene, Inc.
5001 West 78th St.
Minneapolis, Minn. 55437
Modern Talking Picture Service
4 Nevada Drive
Lake Success, N.Y. 11040
Association-Sterling Films Inc.
2221 S. Olive St.
Los Angeles, Ca. 90007
