The 10 NBC Owned Television Station websites logged 16 million unique visitors during the month of August, a 33% increase over the prior year. The sites, which include KNBC-TV Los Angeles, KNTV-TV San Francisco, KNSD-TV San Diego WNBC-TV NYC, WMAQ-TV Chicago and KXAS-TV Dallas, also recorded more than 150 million page views during the month, a 35% boost over last year, with repeat visits growing by 43%.
In addition, the sites benefited from two major technology upgrades. First, HTML5 was rolled out across all 10 sites, ensuring their compatibility with mobile devices like iPhones, Android phones and iPads. Also, a new video hub was launched, making it easier for viewers to access and share local news and information from the sites anytime and anywhere. The sites did remove the “Locals Only” brand earlier this year.
These upgrades follow a major social media-focused site overhaul in early 2011, which improved the showcasing of local news and video and infused social media across the sites, making them more interactive. These changes have resulted in a 94% increase in Twitter referrals and a 34% boost in Facebook referrals compared to the prior year, along with substantially more commenting on stories via Facebook.
“Between our major site redesign and recent technology enhancements, our digital platforms are well-positioned to support the expanded commitment to local news by the NBC-owned stations while delivering our audiences a go-to source for local news,” said Greg Scholl, President of Local Integrated Media for NBC Owned Television Stations. “Across all 10 of our markets, online viewers increasingly rely on the NBC-owned stations to stay up-to-date on the latest local news and information.”
RBR-TVBR observation: This is a similar play that some co-owned radio and TV stations have done in super-serving local and regional news to their audiences. The stations’ websites — radio, TV and other media owned in a market — become a co-branded news destination, period. This has been demonstrated with CBS properties, i.e. in NYC, and most recently, Genesis Communications in Florida with its regional News and News-Talk stations.
