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Online Branding: Kill Your Call Letters?

Fun! Wait. Who Are You, Again?

Michael Malone at Broadcasting and Cable has an interesting quote from Steve Safran at AR&D regarding local television websites and the use of call letters in the URL:  "By using your call letters, you're automatically limiting yourself to those who follow your newscasts," Safran said.  "Why not open it up, make it more inclusive and pull in a whole new audience online."

Okay.  I have many thoughts on this.

First, let's look at the example B&C offers as a success story, WCWJ in Jacksonville, which switched up its domain name to the jazzy and vague "YourJax.com" and saw its traffic spike. According to B&C, the rebranded website with its "fresh content like celebrity-focused weekly webisodes and interactive radar" saw its pageviews jump 150% and clicks on banner ads were up 44%.

The problem with this is that "YourJax" didn't replace call letters.  The WCWJ website had the equally dorky and generic URL "MyCW17.com" as its online identity.  (Go try and type that on a keyboard and you'll see just how awful that really was)  So I can see how going from a disastrous domain to a boring/dorky one could improve your hopes of getting some clicks. (And add to that this equally key fact:  WCWJ has exactly three years of brand equity in its call letters, which were changed to herald the arrival of the CW network)

I still believe call letters have value, and that value can be transfered from broadcast online, just as a name like The New York Times carries weight at the newsstand and even more weight on my computer.

NBC Local Media's on a call killing campaign with its generic (but NBC-boosting) "NBC New York" and "NBC Bay Area" web identities (which the network has certainly given thought to spreading far and wide, well beyond the O&Os;  buying up NBC [CityNameHere] domains in most cities from coast to coast, whether the NBC station's owned by NBC or not) and that serves NBC, but not local stations.

Back to Basics at BZ

There's equity in call letters that have been around for decades.  Heard of WBZ? The effort to run away from that local identity in favor of CBS4 was ultimately abandoned.  Why?  Because folks in Boston know WBZ.  It triggers something. "MyClikBoston.com" may be catchy, but it doesn't resonate news.  (Oh, damn. There I go again thinking this all has to do with news, instead of entertainment webisodes)

And it's not just me.  Robb Lichter, senior VP of new media for LIN stations, told B&C:   "The best way to get people to go to the sites is to take the brand they already know."  LIN's stations use call letter branding online, and have associated microsites with original branding.  "We don't want users to have to go to Google to find us."