“Our data indicates there is absolutely a new audience watching via streaming, and I fully expect that to explode over the next two years,” says Leslie. Likewise, the station’s efforts with OTT apps are creating a new revenue stream, garnering funds from the branded and paid content and ads for their OTT content. Those with experience and their own graphics can rent the studio itself, or they can hire WRAL’s in-house team to produce their concept. “We’re also developing our AR/VR studio into a separate business as a resource to the gaming industry, agencies, and corporations that want to explore AR/VR without having to send their crew to Toronto or LA,” says Leslie. Augmented reality was used to place life-sized graphics, such as featured athletes, within the virtual set. During their nightly half-hour broadcasts throughout the games of “The Olympic Zone,” anchors appeared to be located on the snowy mountains of Pyeongchang, South Korea. The studio enables WRAL to create a virtual world that presenters can interact with, which anchors did during the station’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. Many local newsrooms have been experimenting with augmented reality in their newscasts for several years, but WRAL is taking this a step further, recently opening its own AR/VR studio, which, according to Leslie, is the only one of its kind between New York and Atlanta. OTT users also have access to WRAL documentaries from the past two decades, restaurant reviews, and podcasts from Capital Broadcasting’s sports radio stations.Īt a time when local TV news is often written off as formulaic, with sensationalism triumphing over substance, a host of stations is experimenting with new ways to attract audiencesĪnother area in which WRAL is innovating is augmented and virtual reality. These are live streamed on the OTT apps,, or its niche sites- and -covering professional, college, and high school sports. Sports fans can watch events that don’t make the evening broadcast. Viewers can access everything from live and archived newscasts to live streams of legislative hearings, school board meetings, and court trials. Their Roku app, first rolled out in 2010, offers streaming access to tens of thousands of clips from the station’s archive. WRAL, the flagship station of Capitol Broadcasting Co., which owns two other TV and several radio stations in North Carolina, was one of the first local television news stations in the country to develop an OTT app. “We’re constantly experimenting with different content there and seeing what people want to watch.” “We blew out regular content on the ‘watch now’ section of our OTT apps,” says Leslie, who was previously WRAL’s creative director. Shelly Leslie, general manager of audience development at Capitol Broadcasting, says the station added 35 pieces of Graham-related content–including clips of the motorcade bringing the preacher’s body to the cemetery in Charlotte-to the OTT apps. Any apps or online services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Skype, which bypass distribution via a telecommunications provider qualify as OTT. Those interested in even more coverage of Graham could have turned to WRAL’s over-the-top (OTT) apps, available for Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Chromecast. In addition to reporting the news of Graham’s death, the station produced a 30-minute special, “ Remembering Billy Graham.” It aired the day of his funeral, which was livestreamed on the WRAL website, Facebook, and their mobile news app as well as broadcast live on television, pre-empting the noon newscast. That was no surprise since, after all, the pastor was a North Carolina native, and-though his funeral was held in his hometown of Charlotte, more than 150 miles away-generations of Raleigh-area residents had watched Graham’s global crusades, which WRAL broadcast beginning in the 1970s, on their home television sets. Billy Graham died in February, Raleigh-based WRAL-TV provided expansive coverage of the famed evangelist’s life and legacy. Raleigh, North Carolina-based WRAL’s new AR/VR studio is one of many efforts by local television news stations to innovate in order to attract younger, more diverse audiences In WRAL-TV's production control room, operators view the station’s augmented reality set for their coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
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