Top five local media themes of 2018 – and what’s ahead for 2019

At Magid, we took time to reflect back on 2018, as you do when the calendar flips to a new year. Five key themes in local media emerged: maintaining trust in local news, adding value in ad sales, extending news content to OTT platforms, adapting digital strategy in newsrooms, and exploring the next generation of television.

Here’s a look back at these themes from last year – and where we’ve set our sights for 2019.

Maintaining trust
Trust, credibility and authenticity were top-of-mind for many newsrooms last year, and we gathered insights and explored topics around how to maintain a trusted brand in local media, the importance of active anchors, and taking an investigative approach to local news. I predict that these topics will continue to be prominent throughout 2019.

Adding value in ad sales
With so many options available to local advertisers today, we discussed the need for local sales teams to not only deliver advertising solutions that work, but that also appeal to advertisers’ goals and prove the value of their advertising solution.

Extending to OTT
The popularity of OTT platforms wasn’t new in 2018, but it was a hot topic for local media last year. At Magid, we outlined an approach of going where the viewers are, including four realities of programming to Millennials.

Adapting to digital
As newsrooms realign to invest in digital platforms and content, we made recommendations for digital strategy, brand positioning and audience engagement, including four ways for news organizations to drive traffic to their own sites.

Exploring Next-Gen TV
This year, Magid will be looking to dive deeper into ATSC 3.0 (or Next-Gen TV) and its impact on local television, including sharing recent results from consumer lab testing we did with the Phoenix Model Market project partners and the Pearl TV broadcast business group.

As we hit the ground running in 2019, look for more to come from us on topics around news and content, sales and revenue, and innovation and advanced media.