“This video is so disturbing we are not sharing it”
NBC12 reporter standing in front of a bush.
First, the background
There are three major commercial Broadcast News outlets in Richmond Virginia.The dominant outlet has always been CBS 6 or WTVR-TV6. CBS 6 has been on the air for 75 years and the station has always had a reputation for first class reporting and excellent news management.It has always been the mission of WTVR-TV6 to serve the entirety of the viewing public within reach of its signal.
And it’s reportage has sought to include not only the farmer milking his cows and slopping hogs and plowing the South 40 in some far away rural county but the residents of the beleaguered inner cities of Richmond and Petersburg as well.
To that end WTVR CBS 6 News is the ONLY local news outlet that has a dedicated crime reporter in the person of Jon Burkett and a dedicated Tri-Cities reporter in the person of Wayne Covil.
WTVR-TV6, an award winning machine
Evidence of the excellence of the local news product produced by the staff at WTVR CBS 6 News can be deduced from that WTVR-TV CBS 6 consistently dominates the awards scene, consistently winning far more EMMYS and wire service awards then all the other Central Virginia broadcasters combined.
WWBT NBC12 close behind
Close on the heels of WTVR CBS 6 we have WWBT NBC 12.
In the past NBC 12 put on a credible news program and would often dominate the other two broadcast outlets in the ratings. NBC 12 was known for its slick production values, state of the art equipment and sets. The folks “across the river” as they were referred to, enjoy a history of producing credible, if not cutting edge, news programming.
WWBT-TV NBC 12, the Facebook clickbait champ of Central Virginia
It’s been my observation that the news product at WWBT NBC 12 has always been driven by their Marketing department. Because of that the target audience for NBC 12, in my opinion, has always been the largely white upmarket affluent residents of Chesterfield County.
The Walmart of Broadcasting, scrappy WRIC-TV News8 in the game
Originally licensed in Petersburg Virginia, WRIC now operates out of a facility in Richmond / Chesterfield.
I don’t know how to categorize WRIC.
If I were forced categorize this ABC affiliate I believe I would say they were the Walmart of the local broadcast scene.That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view
All three outlets hot for Facebook
All three of these news outlets maintain a substantial web staff.All three outlets maintain a presence on Facebook, which they feed consistently and on a daily basis.
Of these three top tier local broadcast news outlets, WRIC seems to be the one that consistently has the best content when it comes to frequency of posting and diversity of coverage.Both 6 and 12 cover a diversity of stories on their Facebook pages but both seem to focus most of their energy on crime reportage.WRIC by contrast takes a more far ranging approach, presenting a more balanced selection of stories on their Facebook page, not primarily reportage on the carnage on the streets.
Different Strokes for Different Folks
CBS 6, NBC 12 and News 8 also differ greatly in the accessibility of material on their Facebook pages.
Both CBS 6 and ABC 12 are pretty much Straightforward They do resort to clickbait in their headlines to draw the reader in, but then ALL news operations do that
With CBS 6 and ABC 8, once the reader clicks through they are taken to the article without jumping through a lot of hoops
That is not the case with NBC 12
Headlines don’t always deliver
Click on an NBC12 story invariably brings up a commercial, in most cases it’s an exceptionally irritating commercial for the Greater Richmond Transit Company, the local bus company known as the GRTC.
(It’s really a strange commercial for NBC 12 to be running considering that the target audience for NBC12 is your upmarket affluent residents in Chesterfield County… Hardly the demographic that would be seeking employment as a bus driver in the Inner City in Richmond Virginia)
Clickbait Rules All, but 12 takes the cake
And while all three outlets employee clickbait techniques, the ones employed by NBC 12 seem to be, in my opinion, less connected to the actual facts of the story.
An example.NBC recently reported that several young predators approached a couple of kids in a “bad part” of town, robbed those kids, made them strip and videod the whole process to share on social media.The headline to this Facebook post CLEARLY implied that the reader was going to see this video.But that was not the case.
A click through resulted in the standard irritating GRTC advertisement, then another ad and finally to an excerpt from a newscast.
What the viewer saw after jumping through all these hoops was a young reporter standing in front of a nondescript bush informing us that
“This video is so disturbing we are not sharing it”
In other words, this story is pure clickbait. There is the implied promise in the way the headline is crafted that we’re going to see the video so in good faith we click on their link. But guess what, to access it we have to sit through another one of those ridiculous GRTC ads, and THEN we’re told that we’re too immature to handle the video.
We understand that all three broadcast outlets are using social media and clickbait to generate profits. That’s simply the world we live in. But as a consumer of all three local media outlets AND a number of local stations Nationwide we at Postcards from Facebook Jail would have to say that NBC 12 is the absolute WORST when it comes clickbaiting
And this is an especially egregious example of the depth a local news outlet might go to in pursuit of clicks and profits
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