RTNDA's Ultimate Newscast Makeover -- v2.0 -- Doing more with more!

This week, local news viewers in the Monroe, LA/El Dorado, AR market are seeing news like they've never seen before. KTVE NBC 10 News is all-new, thanks to RTNDA's Ultimate Newscast Makeover. For the past 7 months, designers from the news industry's top creative firms, FX Group, VDO, Stephen Arnold Music and The Coaching Company have been collaborating to transform a station that looked like it was stuck in the past, to one that looks and is way ahead of its time.

Photos? We got photos. That's the news set at top. Here's another one, the new weather set.



Click here for an entire photo album, including hi-res photos for reprints.

What's my role in this project? Obviously, I don't design sets, make music, design graphics, and I'm not a professional coach (though I do give advice for 5 cents like Lucy in Peanuts). Two years ago, I created the project for RTNDA, and I serve as project producer. Now that the Makeover is done at KTVE, I'll be putting together the documentary for our convention (in 3 weeks!), hosting the live session at the convention, and writing the cover story for RTNDA's Communicator magazine to be published in June.

To produce the Ultimate Newscast Makeover is to work with the most amazing team of designers you could imagine. Mack McLaughlin at FX Group has built a large and successful set-design and manufacturing firm. Diane Fiolek and Dianne Streyer at VDO are brilliantly creative and a ton of fun too. Chad Cook at Stephen Arnold Music is talented and has that musician-cool sense about him. And I have a deep and profound respect for Bill Brown of The Coaching Company. He spent several days at KTVE the past couple of months, coaching talent and production staff, and leading the entire team through a series of rehearsals leading up to the launch day, Thursday March 30. Somehow Bill learned everyone's name. He has the gift of making you feel like you're the most important person in the room when he talks to you.

This post is subtitled "Doing More with More", because this was The Coaching Company's first year with the project. Last year, we did a great Makeover for WCYB-TV in Bristol, TN/VA. They got a new set, new graphics and new music, just like KTVE did this year, but we didn't have anyone on the team to help them put it all together. WCYB did just fine with all their new elements, but the added benefit KTVE got from The Coaching Company was beyond measure. Bill (and partners Barry Nash and Dennis Kendall) were the glue that made this project a complete coordinated success.

KTVE is a lucky but deserving station. They were one of about a dozen newsrooms who applied to be considered for the Makeover this year. They're a long-time #2 news product in a market with only two stations doing local news. But they have a lot going for them, namely a talented team of people, and a new general manager, Mark Cummings, and news director, Jeff Hamburger, bringing fresh energy to the staff.

What did KTVE get? About $300,000 in free design, consultation, manufacturing, production and coaching. Pretty slick. The challenge for them now is to take the new environment we've put them in, and use it to build new relationships with their viewers. No doubt they'll win with weather, as they've got 3 of the market's 4 working meteorologists, and now they have a weather command center to keep them on the air, and in touch with radar and data at the same time.

Congratulations KTVE on a successful launch! We loved working with you, and we wish you all the best. We'll see Mark, Jeff and chief engineer Joe Holland at RTNDA@NAB on April 24th. Hope to see you there too.

Before you move on, click to the Monroe News Star newspaper to read more about KTVE's new Ultimate Newscast Makeover. (Link may not be permanent.)