Have you heard the expression “if it bleeds it leads?” Well, that’s not always the case.
Before any of us ever paid attention to CHUM on FM, there was 1050 CHUM in Toronto. It was a powerhouse with over 1,000,000 listeners. 1050 CHUM was one of the biggest Top 40 radio stations in North America, right up there with CKLW in Windsor/Detroit, WABC in New York and KHJ in Los Angeles.
In order to be a performer on CHUM, you needed to have the “CHUM sound.” Luckily for me, at 20 years old, I had the “CHUM sound.” At that point, I also had a few years of news experience at big radio stations under my belt so I was hired as a news anchor for both 1050 CHUM and CHUM FM.
I quickly discovered that newscasts weren’t just newscasts, they were “shows” and a big part of the production process was called “stacking the show.”
“Stacking the show” is a process that’s still used today in newsrooms all over the world. It’s the process of determining which stories deserve to be at the top of the newscast, which ones go near the bottom and which ones don’t make the cut at all because they’re either boring or not newsworthy.
The “lead story” is always the most exciting; the one that affects the most people; the one that’s the most shocking; the story that people will be talking about. For example, when “stacking the show,” a tax increase is going to go before a story about a stabbing because, although the stabbing is bad news for the victim, more people are affected by the tax increase and so that’s the lead. (Although, if the crime story is shocking enough or involves somebody famous, it could become the lead).
Sometimes, in our media training sessions, I’ll hear somebody complain, “We issued a news release but nobody picked it up!” or “I did the interview and they didn’t air it. I can’t even find it online!”
That’s because when news people are “stacking the show,” they decided that “nobody cares.”
A lot of times, it’s the way the news release is written. Companies need an easy-to-digest, compelling lead line. Of these two versions of a news release, which lead line is going to grab your attention?
“According to a preliminary data analysis from a randomized, controlled trial involving 1063 patients, which began on February 21, hospitalized cancer patients with spleen involvement who received CBM-1902-A had a 31.05% faster recovery time than similar patients who received placebo, suggesting a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 6.0% for the group receiving CMB-1902-A versus 12.9% for the placebo group (p=0.059)”
Or…
“Pulmoprex Pharmaceutical’s promising new cancer drug could save lives.”
If you want your story to make the cut, you need to make it easy for news people to use your information:
What’s new about this story?
What’s different?
Tell me something I don’t know.
Does it grab my attention?
If you’re doing a video interview, make sure you’re speaking in sound bites and delivering your information in a compelling way; using your voice, your hands, your facial expressions, use every tool you have.
When the people in the news department are reading your news release or looking at a video clip of your interview while they’re “stacking the show,” give them a reason to care.
