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Case study

Strategy and early results for WCPO-TV's paywall program

Why and how some television sites are going paid

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The mysterious murder of a policeman was explored online in a long-form multi-media piece "Exit 34". One example of amped up horse-power in WCPOTV's local online newsroom.

Company: E.W. Scripps Company

Market: Cincinnati, Ohio

Media: WCPO-TV

Initiative: Creating a paywall for additional in-depth local news

Key executive: Adam Symson, Chief Digital Officer

Challenge:   By 2012, executives at E.W. Scripps studying the convergence of news coverage by newspapers and television online realized that simply migrating content from traditional platforms provided an inadequate consumer experience - and a competitive challenge.

The company came up with a unique plan for television sites: Building out in-depth local coverage  financed in part by paywalls, to make stations' digital news competitive with local newspapers. They wanted to combine broadcast news' strengths in the areas of urgent news, weather and video, with the kind of depth and perspective owned by newspapers.

The initiative “starts with a strategy of divergence," Symson says.

"This is a strategy that assumes that traditional television news migrated to digital is not, by itself, going to be enough to win the digital news consumer. We acknowledge this. But television stations should not cede and allow newspapers to dominate the space for depth and perspective."

So with the local newspaper “distracted and playing defense, E.W. Scripps began investing in local news at its leading broadcast site, WCPO in Cincinnatti.

Strategy:  WCPO in Cincinnatti, was one of the first television sites online, with some of the first mobile apps, and is currently one of the strongest television sites in the country. By 2013,  the station begain to quietly build-up a local digital newsrooom, taking advantage of cutbacks in other media to aggressively recruit top talent. Symson claims the new newsroom has “the market's best reporters” and a total of 30 on the team.

The site began incrementally adding more content, “wrapped in an insider or membership model.”

Essentially, breaking news stays outside the paywall, while the more indepth and unique news beats are part of the insiders club.

“The stuff that was there before, great breaking news with traffic that is more perishable - all that is there and remains free,” Symson said.

On the other hand, the rest of the content created by 30 journalists and community writers - content that is changing the site’s identity to a leading news and information source - is behind the wall. 

"This content-based approach, rather than a user based approach, is also true for the paywall strategy company wide," Symson said (see a related case study on time-based meter at Scripps newspapers here).

An example of ground-breaking local journalism allowed by the beefed up news staff is a story titled Exit 34, written in classic long-form story-telling format with lot of multi-media component, about the unsolved murder of a local policeman. As indicative of the new news, video interviews and audio casts are also posted in stories.

Here's the standard television site:

Down the right rail of the home page, "Insider News" tempts visitors to click on more in-depth local stories.  

There is a new, heavy emphasis on local business coverage.

Besides a contributing editor, business also has a full time reporter. “We hired away from the Business Courier two of their best reporters," Symson says.

The total team of 30 reporters and community managers cover a variety of beats, including education, arts and entertainment, government and politics, and crime and justice.

"It's really a loyalty and engagement strategy."

Clicking on a story allows visitors to view the first few paragraphs of a story, before seeing a prompt to sign-up or log in. Here's an example of the check-out:


The cost to "join" WCPO is $7.99 a month or $80 for the year, including all devices. And the company carefully watches competitive news pricing in the market.

Results and lessons learned:

• While E.W. Scripps  will not release numbers, Symson says subscriptions sales are on a pace to hit financial targets. "We have aggressive goals and are happy with pacing."

• The goals remain primarily longer term and qualitative: To prove a model for a sustainable newsroom can dominate a more full-spectrum of news, from breaking headlines, to depth and perspective.

“The goal is to build the audience for local news that has depth and perspective." 

• Television has some financial advantages that help the model launch aggressively, while newspaper newsrooms are shedding employees.

"Television newsrooms do not start with the need to maintain and support the expensive infrastructure of a newspaper," Symson said.

“Unlike a newspaper market, we are not in this to hedge against declining (print) subscriptions. We believe at the end of the day there is enough capital in a local market to support two to three strong media brands.

"(The investment in local news) is the price of admission to own (one of those spots). The alternative is to let newspapers have a monopoly on depth, perspective and analysis.”

“We have a robust plan that lays it out ... but if it was just an excel spread sheet everyone would have done it... it takes time. It is a play on the long run. It is a play to win a market. I don't think you can win and disrupt in a matter of moments.”

Many thanks to Adam Symson, Chief Digital Officer, for sharing this model with LocalMediaInsider members.

Adam Symson Adam Symson, Chief Digital Officer

                                       E.W. Scripps Company

scripps, WCPO, cincinnatti, television, paid content, paywall, subscriptions