Break On Through (To The Other Side)

So since I last blogged about WINOL, I have become Sports Editor (yes this was a while back now).
So far it has been an interesting challenge, a pressured role which has caused me an awful lot of stress, but one I have thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless. This week, however, Chris and Brian upped the ante.

A few years back, Sportsweek (my pet project as Sports Ed) saw views of 1000+ on a regular basis. It has slipped a long way since then, now more regularly reaching 100-200 views per bulletin. In our de-brief this week, I was questioned as to why we no longer get such viewing figures. I took this as a personal challenge, to revive the viewing figures of old for this weeks bulletin, to prove that we as a sports team are still capable of producing a high quality broadcast and capturing a large audience. I tasked the team with getting the viewing figures for this weeks bulletin to 1000 by Monday morning. No mean feat by any means, but certainly achievable given the potential audience we have.

To help with this project, I contacted Will Cooper, the Sports Editor when Sportsweek was regularly hitting views of 1000+. His advice was very helpful and has given us a fighting chance of reaching our target. The main suggestions he made were to post links to Sportsweek on the surprisingly popular forums for the non-league sides we cover, as well as their opponents, pointing out that at the non-league level, football fans rarely get any coverage, and so the opportunity to see highlights of their matches is a rarity. Forums, it is already clear, are a great source of views, and we have taken to posting the highlights not simply on the respective club's forums, but on general non-league forums. Will also recommended developing good relationships with the clubs we cover, and see if they will promote it on their website, in the matchday programme etc, which is something we are working on. Finally there is the all important world of social media promotion, with the clubs and fan groups often having facebook pages, twitter profiles etc, which we can promote Sportsweek on.

When I set down this challenge to the team on Monday, we still had to worry ourselves with creating a high quality bulletin, which I feel we certainly achieved. It went online yesterday (Wednesday) at roughly 4pm, and the team went into promotion mode. So far our active promotion is having a noticeable impact on viewing figures. Less than 24 hours after the video went online, we have already overtaken the viewing figures for last weeks show, and at the time of writing we have managed 223 views. With continued promotion over the weekend I am confident we can reach our target of 1000 by Monday morning.

The show itself this week was reasonably good, although there were some small issues.
Kirsty's package on Winton was very good, although I do feel it went on longer than necessary. This was, however, a conscious decision in an attempt to feature as many of the Sports from across the weekend as possible. The scripting was good, however the tone of voice could use work, as it lacked enthusiasm. Overall though, it was a good package, neatly summarising what Winton is and what went on.
Liam's package on Basingstoke was strong, the camerawork was good, as was the scripting and voiceover work, however the tone of the piece felt somewhat melodramatic, perhaps we could have used less music?
Tom's piece on Eastleigh was an improvement on last week, and it benefited from great deliberation over the scripting. There are still some problems to be ironed out with the length of certain shots, but overall I felt it was a solid highlights package.
Lewis' first shot at presenting, it would be fair to say, did not go all that smoothly, although there is clearly potential there. With a little more practice and clearer direction from the gallery I'm sure the next attempt will be a great improvement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps51BNqxBPI&list=UUyAYQNkBBdilSgiQpLiNCEA&index=2

I'll let you know when we hit 1000 ;)