John Colucci (@johncolucci) is the Social Media Director for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which operates more than 170 broadcast TV stations in 81 U.S. markets. Within their newsrooms, you’ll find a mix of reporters and anchors going live to tell important stories in their communities, and digital teams using Periscope Producer to bring breaking news broadcasts to viewers.
What inspired you to start broadcasting?
Our company’s mission statement is “connecting people with content everywhere,” which recognizes that people like to get their news in many ways. Some watch TV, some go to our websites or apps–but many exclusively use social media to keep up with the news. It’s that last part that inspired us to educate our stations on the power of social live-streaming tools like Periscope and the impact it can have on storytelling.
What’s been the most interesting experience that you’ve shared on Periscope?
Last fall, we were one of the first broadcasters to create a path for our stations to share their on-air broadcasts with Periscope Producer. Our first big test of the platform’s power happened during Hurricane Matthew last year. Both @ABCNews4, our station in Charleston, SC and our South Florida station @CBS12 went on air with wall-to- wall coverage for many hours, and these stations simulcast this in its entirety to Periscope and Twitter.
What do you wish someone had told you before you started broadcasting?
With Twitter being a real-time, unfiltered feed, sharing one link to a broadcast that is live for many hours might get buried later in the day. So, we started recommending that our newsrooms Tweet what was happening in the broadcast and point their audience to the video so they could watch live. This kept it fresh in the feed and invited new people to join the broadcast as they checked in on Twitter.
What’s on your bucket list of things to broadcast?
We’re outfitting a number of our stations with drones and I expect to see more breaking news coverage using them to broadcast aerial views live via Periscope and Twitter. Additionally, we’re planning to broadcast more live 360 video, something I had the chance to experiment with a bit in conjunction with our Las Vegas, NV station @News3LV during this year’s CES.
Who are some of your favorite broadcasters who we should follow today?
Specifically from @KOMONews in Seattle, Reporter Steve McCarron (@SteveTVNews) and Photographer Peter Mongillo (@PeterMonPhotog) both go live on Periscope and Twitter all the time, to show us breaking news and slices of life in Western Washington. Outside of our stations, I personally like the frequency in which @PBSNewsHour uses Periscope to bring us news from around the country and around the world.
