Briefing Senior Staff

Last week I got to sit in on the weekly executive meeting with the General Manager and each department director. I was in the meeting to brief staff on the upcoming TV Works events I’m planning. This is only the third year we’ve run this event and it requires help and support from everyone on station.

I put together a powerpoint presentation that firstly explained what the event was about, our goals and objectives, last years success and the process involved. It took me ages to put it together but it also helped clear things up in my own mind and highlighted some things I’d forgotten about.

I think the presentation went really well. My main aim was to get support from the directors as I’d be needing help from their staff. Following the presentation they started asking questions and suggesting ways they could help which was really good! I then set up individual meetings with each department director to go through exactly what we’d need help with.

I’ve pretty pleased with how the event planning process is going so far. I’ve been lucky in that this is the third year Channel Nine has held the event so I have lots of paperwork and external contacts to help me. My next steps are to finalise all hospitality/venue bookings and start working with production on the presentation reel.

Although our reports are due next week, I’ll be continuing with this internship until the event in early August.

On Station Seminars

In August Channel Nine is holding educational seminars called ‘TV Works’. They’re information sessions for prospective customers who will be offered ‘one off’ deals if they attend. Last year the seminars made a huge amount of incremental revenue for the station and we’re hoping for the same result this year.

Although this is primarily a sales initiative, there’s a lot of coordination and PR efforts that go into the planning and implementation of the day. In previous years the station has hired an events planning company to do all the legs work however this year they’ve asked me to project manage the event.

Last year I helped out during the seminars but I wasn’t involved in the planning process. Unfortunately the person who did it last year is no longer with the company so it’s taken me a while to get my head around how much work is involved! The first thing I did was go through last years folder and create a list of things that needed to be done and by what date. I had to make a lot of phone calls and check with people in the PR office to see what went on last year. Our Adelaide offices run the same seminars so I’ve been in contact with them as well. Once I had a list of jobs I costed each aspect of the event to ensure we fit within the budget. The company has a strict cost recovery model so I had to speak with the sales staff to ensure the expect number of packages sold was realistic.

The Seminars require a huge effort from everyone on station. We need help from production to create an impressive show reel, engineering for audio and visual help, News to coordinate talent and use them wherever possible, admin/security to help with letting people in and out etc and sales who will be hosting the clients. My next step is to hold a meeting with the heads of department to get them excited and let them know what we’ll be doing differently this year. I’ll briefly mention the jobs/help required but go into more detail in individual meetings.

Lots to do on top of my usual workload but I’m really excited to be in charge of such an amazing event!

Distribution Lists

I’ve finished over 2 weeks of my work experience at Channel Nine. My first week was really focused on event planning as I was organising an event for our Nine Lives club. Last week was more about doing odd jobs here and there and helping out the public relations team as much as possible. One of the jobs I was helping on was the Media Release distribution lists. Channel Nine media releases serve two separate purposes. They’re intended to generate awareness about new shows, upcoming promotions, ratings wins etc amongst the general Perth community but they’re also targeted at our clients - Media Buying agencies. This means we have two separate distribution lists to arrange. The first list is for the media outlets in Perth and the second is for media agencies. It’s important these are kept separate because not all releases are relevant to everyone and we don’t want to bombard people with information they aren’t interested in. For example High Five coming to Perth might be something The West Australian use however a media agency who buys pronominally Ppl25-54 doesn’t have time to sift through information on children’s programming. This week I sorted through the Media Buyers list and updated who I thought should and shouldn’t be included. I added any new assistants and took off senior executives who no longer work in a buying capacity. I also was given the job of deciding which media releases should and shouldn’t be sent out. Although majority of our releases are written locally, we also get a huge amount from the Eastern States offices. Most of this information related to 5 cap city data which is generally irrelevant to our smaller Perth based clients. I decided rather than forwarding this information on (and irritating clients with elevated 5 cap city figures) I’d work with our ratings analysis in Sydney and have the data localised to Perth only. Although it brought the figures down, we were still able to find ‘good news’ stories and look more credible in the eyes of our media agencies.