"OU Nightly": Your News on Your Station

"OU Nightly": Your News on Your Station

Caitlin Gooch

Every weekday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., a bright and enthusiastic team of undergraduate journalism students bring news right to your home directly from Gaylord Hall. These students work around the clock everyday to bring you the most up to date and interesting stories of the day.

"OU Nightly" has been recognized as one of the top student broadcast stations in Oklahoma. The newscast covers news from both local and national angles, weather, sports, as well as focusing on events happening in the Norman community. However, in our campaign, we have found out that many students or residents of Norman are unaware of the broadcast.

To increase awareness and viewership for the newscast, we have targeted specific publics. One of our publics is parents within the Norman community. We first created a benchmark parent survey asking parents if they have heard of the show or if they would watch the show if one of their kids were featured on the newscast. We received a very positive response from parents that let us know we needed to get their kids on the news.

Our event for our campaign is centered around second graders from Kennedy Elementary School. We have communicated with the staff of the second grade class to see if they would be interested in participating in our event. To kids, seeing and listening to a college student is extremely exciting, and meeting someone who is in college and on TV is even more exciting.

We teamed up with a group of anchors from "OU Nightly" that have agreed to be showcased to one of four second grade classes at Kennedy Elementary. Each anchor will be assigned to a second grade class and talk to the kids about what the news really is. Our goal is to have a segment air from our visit to the school, which will get kids talking to their parents about the newscast and watching it to see if they get on the news. The main idea is to use the kids as a tool to get to their parents.

Our strategy in reaching this public is to encourage kids to start watching and paying attention to the news at an early age. Parents are naturally protective of what their kids watch, even if it is the news. Also, our research indicates that parents need guidance in how to talk to their kids about the news. One of our main sources is the PBS Web site, where we found a great list of tips of how to talk to kids about the news.

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