Gray Television is teaming up with other TV stations to launch a free, local-news streamer, and running Super Bowl ads starring John Stamos to get the word out.
The service, called Zeam, comes from streaming-tech company Syncbak, which is backed by Gray, the National Association of Broadcasters, and others and is led by technology vet Jack Perry. Zeam said about 300 stations from Gray, CBS, Hearst, and others representing nearly 80% of the country’s media markets committed to participating in the service.
Perry’s pitch to local stations is that Zeam removes the tech and ad barriers from the process of adapting to streaming. Stations provide the programming and can sell ads against it. Zeam will sell what’s left using its programmatic ad sales platform, AdSync, and share most of the revenue with them.
“It’s a whole new way for stations to interact with their viewers and reach viewers in other markets,” Perry said. “We’re going to own local.”
Local TV has fared better than other parts of the news business, but stations are planning for the migration of audiences and ad dollars to streaming. Revenue from retransmission fees — which cable and satellite systems pay to carry local channels — has grown quickly in the past 10 years, but its rate of growth has slowed, according to Kagan estimates.
At the same time, local TV ad revenue is shifting online. Digital is set to account for 10% of the $23.8 billion local TV ad pie in 2024, or $2.1 billion, per BIA Advisory Services.
“Any station worth its salt is thinking about this problem and extending its reach beyond the linear broadcast platform,” said Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News who now consults for local TV stations. “Linear pays most of the bills, but no question, over time, people are going to increasingly be using streaming platforms to view local news.”
Zeam is spending big to promote the service
If Zeam sounds familiar to some, it’s because it’s an evolution of VUit, a streamer Syncbak launched in 2020 to be what Perry called the “Netflix of live, local, and free.”
Perry said he saw VUit as a way to test the concept and the results gave him confirmation. Syncbak saw viewers logging on to VUit an average of 29 times a month and watching content from several markets, and some stations generated more than six figures a month in revenue with virtually no promotion for VUit.
Encouraged by those numbers, Syncbak is spending more than $10 million to promote and launch Zeam as a replacement for VUit (Perry wouldn’t give specific figures).
For the Super Bowl, marketing agency Known created ads tailored to individual markets like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Las Vegas to underscore Zeam’s local relevance. In a teaser for the spot, Stamos emerges, dripping, from a pool and looks seductively at the camera to the strains of silky R&B music: “I’mma keep you up tonight … you can’t hold back.”
In addition to the Super Bowl campaign, Syncbak built a studio in Times Square for local creators and artists to make programming for the platform.
Zeam thinks there’s demand for local news beyond where people live
Mike Braun, SVP and chief digital officer of Gray, which was also part of the VUit launch, said the streamer helped drive ad dollars and viewership to Gray’s 113 markets. He believes that with the promotion behind Zeam, there’s an opportunity to get his programming seen in other markets.
“I think it’s gigantic,” he said. “We’ve seen AdSync in action, so we know more viewership will create more revenue.”
Success isn’t a given. Zeam will have to gain awareness with viewers and get stations to make compelling content that will keep viewers coming back.
While some advertisers perceive local news as more positive than national news, the category overall is historically a no-go for many advertisers, who don’t want their brands to be associated with negative content. After local events, crime is the biggest reason people watch local news, Known’s market research found. Zeam said it addresses the brand safety issue by letting advertisers target or exclude specific programming genres.
More broadly, for those that do want to zero in on local, tech companies like Google have made it easier for advertisers to buy that way.
In addition to using the biggest ad platform in the Super Bowl, Zeam is crisscrossing the country in a branded mobile van to promote the streamer, and it’s getting local markets to push it. Zeam is set to debut on Super Bowl Sunday (February 11) and be available on all major streamers and devices, including iOS and Android, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV+.
“You’ll be seeing Zeam promotions from now till the end of time,” Perry said.
This story has been updated with new details.
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