Orlando: Digital Lab For Big Media Players
Local NBC affiliate WESH-TV created a Casey Anthony Updates Facebook page in summer 2010, with links to videos and stories on its own site. The page has generated nearly 276,000 likes as of mid-October 2011. It also created its own paid iPhone app exclusive to the trial, allowing users to access court documents, a blog, case timeline and other features. During the trial, it was consistently among the top five selling paid news apps on iTunes, said Gabe Travers, WESH 2 News’ digital media manager.
WOFL-TV, the local Fox affiliate, bought the rights to CaseyAnthonyMurderTrial.com, directing visitors to its MyFoxOrlando Anthony page. The station pushed out breaking developments through text alerts, solicited questions for legal experts on its Facebook page and hosted real-time chatting about the trial.
And all the major media outlets had live video streaming of the trial
Unsurprisingly, the number of unique visitors for the area’s five major media outlets all increased during the trial, thanks in part to the digital ingenuity. In the case of the Sentinel, unique visitors doubled from 2.6 million for the month of April to 5.3 million in July when the trial concluded, according to online research company comScore Inc. WESH’s Web traffic more than doubled, from 633,000 in April to 1.7 million in July, according to comScore measures.
These new tactics are to be expected in a market such as Orlando, said Kip Cassino, executive VP of local advertising research firm Borrell Associates. With major tourist destinations Walt Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando, the local media players get a lot of national attention from consumers. Consequently, “the legacy media, TV and newspapers especially, watch it very, very closely,” Cassino said. “It’s one of their experimental markets to try new things.”
The Casey Anthony trial gave Orlando’s local media outlets the perfect setting to display their experimental efforts to the rest of the nation.
The market — the nation’s 19th largest, according to Nielsen — currently has a total population around 3.7 million, with a median household income of $46,481.
The tourism industry took a hit from the recession in 2009, but the number of Orlando visitors increased 10.5% in 2010 and is expected to increase another 3.7% this year to 53.4 million visitors, according to tourism marketing agency Visit Orlando.
What impact does this have on local media? Amusement parks and hotels and motels, two industries most directly affected by this, paid for about 10.6% of online local advertising in 2011, according to Borrell. And tourism is the top employing industry in Orlando, raking in $27.6 billion in 2009 and accounting for 31% of total employment in the Orlando tri-county area, and producing $13.6 billion in annual earned wages, according to Visit Orlando, so ultimately there’s a ripple affect that impacts other businesses and local advertising. Borrell estimates local ad spending online to be $159.1 million this year. It’s expected to increase 65.5% to $263.3 million by 2016.
Local TV affiliates take up the rest of the top slots. In second is WFTV-TV, an ABC affiliate run by Atlanta-based Cox Media Group Inc., with an average 1 million unique visitors per month for the year ending September 2011. Not far behind is WESH, a Hearst-owned station, with an average 829,417 unique visitors a month.
On WESH’s heels is WKMG-TV’s ClickOrlando.com — owned by Post-Newsweek Stations Inc., a division of the Washington Post Co. — the CBS affiliate averaged 738,250 unique visitors for the year ending September 2011.
WOFL, owned by Fox Television Stations Inc., is in fifth with 536,000 average monthly unique visitors to MyFoxOrlando.com over the past 11 months. (The station switched to comScore’s new measurement methodology in October 2010, so September 2010 numbers would not be comparable, explained comScore’s marketing manager Carmela Aquino.)
Besides being the Web site for Orlando’s only daily newspaper, the Sentinel site benefits in one big way with El Sentinel, Orlando’s weekly Spanish paper that has its own complete online presence at the Sentinel site. The Hispanic population is the fastest growing minority group in America, and that is of particular significance in Orlando, Cassino said. Right now, the Orlando Sentinel is the only media player out of the top five in town trying to capitalize on that trend with a Spanish-language news Web site.
Recognizing the growth in the daily deal industry lead by Groupon and in social media lead by Facebook, the Sentinel has established a presence on Facebook and Twitter, netting 37,343 followers as of mid-October, and is offering its own daily deals. Mobile is another big growth area, and the Sentinel is leading the way in Orlando. It has free apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android, a mobile-friendly site, a Kindle edition and an app exclusively covering the University of Central Florida, the nation’s second largest university.
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