subject: Broadcast Monitoring: How To Select A Tv & Radio News Monitoring Service [print this page] What's the role of broadcast news monitoring, sometimes referred to as TV news monitoring, in an overall corporate media monitoring program?When should you use a broadcast monitor?How do you go about selecting a broadcast monitoring service?
Broadcast Monitoring: TV News
While most print publications now publish online, the same is not true of live TV news broadcasts.
Online news monitoring services can track and deliver news articles on the websites of TV networks and local TV stations - but not live TV newscasts, at least not with the same online software.
Live newscasts in the U.S. are best monitored through closed caption feeds or full video recordings.Live TV newscast monitoring is available from specialist broadcast monitoring companies.
In the U.S., the broadcast monitoring specialists are Video Monitoring Service (VMS), TVEyes, and Critical Mention.The News Data Service (NDS) cooperative of local independent broadcast monitors also offers access to news broadcasts and magazine/talk shows of TV networks and local TV affiliates.Each indepent affiliate of NDS uses standardized software to access the video from all 210 markets.All the broadcast monitors offer some form of streaming video clips of TV news programs.
Some online news monitoring services such as CyberAlert include monitoring of closed-caption text of TV stations as part of their service.They deliver a text file, not streaming video.They can also order video clips of specific news stories.The online services offer the advantage of integrated news monitoring where you receive both online and TV news clips in the same daily clip report with the same clip archive, typically at lower cost than the dedicated broadcast monitors.
The major press clipping services, Burrelle'sLuce and Cision, offer TV news monitoring in affiliation with VMS and Critical Mention, respectively.
The specialized broadcast monitoring services all offer essentially the same service - but vary in market coverage and bells & whistles features.
What Do Broadcast Monitoring Services Monitor?
Essentially, the services monitor the news programs on all the TV news networks and most local TV stations in all (or most all) 210 U.S. markets.The broadcast monitoring companies record the closed caption text of the news program - that's the federally mandated text of the audio for use by the hearing impaired that you often see on sports programs in bars where it's not possible to hear the audio -- and they record the full video and audio tracks.
The broadcast monitors then assemble the closed caption text into a searchable database for each day's news programming.With software similar to Google's online search engine, they can search that text database for virtually any key word or phrase including but not limited to corporate, brand or executive names each day, then find and deliver the video clips to their subscribers.
The broadcast monitoring technology has improved markedly in the last few years and is now very good, but it does have some quirks and glitches.The quality of the closed caption searching capabilities differs from monitor to monitor.About 80% of any given newscast will be covered by closed caption text, including all of the commentary that the news anchor is reading from a Teleprompter.Closed caption text is often missing on live remote commentary by field reporters.If a key word is mentioned during a "live remote", the monitoring service may miss the clip.Because the services monitor only text, they miss any visual references in the story such as logos on uniforms or commercial signs for instance.
Unlike online news monitoring where misspellings are rare, closed caption text - usually typed on the fly in real time by humans - contains more than a few misspellings.Most broadcast monitors, therefore, will counsel you to search for common misspelling of corporate, brand and executive names.
Streaming Video Recordings of Newscasts.
Most broadcast monitors now offer streaming video and online search engines for their subscriber clients.With streaming video, the recorded audio/video tracks are available to be seen online by subscribers very shortly after the live broadcast.The broadcast monitoring service automatically monitors the key words specified by the client and delivers an e-mail listing the new stories found in the previous 24 hours.In addition, most services permit subscribers themselves to enter search terms to quickly find stories on additional topics.
Who Should Subscribe to a Broadcast Monitoring Service?
Most small to mid-size businesses do not require ongoing broadcast monitoring service - which typically cost $500/mo or more. If your organization appears on local TV news programs infrequently, then it's not necessary to subscribe to a broadcast monitoring service.In these cases, you'll likely know about the TV news story in advance or one of your employees or friends will have seen the TV news story.In addition to employees, friends and family, the online news monitoring service you use may also pick up on online reference to the story from the website of the local TV station.
If you've learned about a TV news story about your organization, you can contact a broadcast monitoring service and ask if they can get the story for you.You can ask the price at the same time and do some comparison shopping.Usually, the local broadcast monitoring affiliate of the News Data Service is the most likely to have the story since they are closest to the local market, will be the most cooperative in finding the story and copying the clip, and likely charge the lowest price. There will be a charge for the transcript of the closed caption text and a larger fee for a video clip, usually delivered as a downloadable MP3 file or on a DVD.
For national organizations with more than a modest number of TV media clips per month, an ongoing subscription to a broadcast monitoring service is likely a good investment to assure the organization is up to date on all the news being broadcast about the organization and its brands in U.S. markets.In times of PR crisis such as a product recall, broadcast monitoring is an essential service to keep up-to-the-minute on all reports and be able to respond in a timely way.
For companies with large numbers of TV clips each year, subscription services that charge a fixed monthly rate with no per clip fee offer the best value.
Broadcast Monitoring: Radio News & Talk
Radio is more difficult to monitor than TV.There are far more stations more widely dispersed.There is no closed caption text.
If you know a person is going to appear on a radio talk show and you want a recording, the interviewee can ask the station for a copy, or you can contact National Aircheck in advance and they will arrange to record the interview over the air.National Aircheck also records all the news programming on all news stations in major cities and many of the nationally syndicated talk radio shows, as does Video Monitoring Service (VMS).If you know what you want - say the Sunday 10:00 am news on WCBS all news radio in New York - they can probably deliver it.
Monitoring on a continuing basis for corporate or brand mentions, however, is more problematic.The companies use speech to text software to produce transcriptions of the news - but... and there are buts: though it has been improved over the last few years, the software is still less than 80% accurate.In addition, when you look at the broad picture, the radio monitoring services don't cover many stations since they concentrate on the all news and talk radio stations which are located in major markets.
Assessing Broadcast Monitoring Services
Once you have decided what you want to cover - and have made a list of the broadcast monitoring services of interest to you - you can start contacting and vetting potential vendors.
Include in your assessment the national broadcast monitoring companies such as Critical Mention, TVEyes, and Video Monitoring Service.You can contact the national broadcast monitoring services but the service located in your city may be the best place to start.Most have national affiliations and can get clips from anywhere in the country.Unfortunately, the websites of the International Association of Broadcast Monitors and News Data Service do not allow customers to search for the names of the local broadcast monitoring companies by city.At the moment, the best way to find a local independent broadcast monitor is the Google search engine with the search term "broadcast monitoring services" AND "name of city".
For many organizations, then, broadcast monitoring of TV and radio news is a key component of a media monitoring program and use of a broadcast monitoring service is the most effective and least costly approach to comprehensive and accurate broadcast coverage.
