There's a new buzzword in broadcasting - "branding."  I hear it everywhere I turn, and must confess that I wonder what it really means. 

It's pretty clear that someone - and probably a lot of someones - think that this will be the salvation of the industry, the thing that will reverse our decades-long slide in popularity and restore us to the prominent public perch we once inhabited. 

I'm not so sure. 

The word popped up again the other day when I was reading  Marc Gunther's piece in the American Journalism Review (http://www.newslink.org/ajrfoodlion.html) on the likely impact of the Food Lion case on TV news.  Gunther is concerned that the pressures of competing for ratings in prime time will boomerang on the "brand name" of network news. 

That's just the latest mention.  I've been hearing a lot about "branding" for at least a year now.  It's the trade term given to the recent stampede of TV stations identifying themselves on the air with the initials of their network followed by their channel number - like FGH41. 

Clearly, "branding" is another term that has made the migration from marketing to TV in general, and TV news specifically.  It is the newest business concept that is supposed to help turn the tide, stem the losses, and keep over the air TV free and safe for the new century. 

I worry that it may not work - at least not any better than any of the other ideas that have made their way from the public-opinion boiler room to the newsroom in the last 20 years.  "Branding" is the newest iteration of a business philosophy that hasn't exactly been effective. 

It's the same philosophy that led two decades ago to the "naming" of newscasts in an effort to help viewers more easily remember who we were and what we did.  (I think the buzzword we used back then was "differentiation."  So we had "ActionTotalEye- witnessNewsSource" (depending on which bunch of marketeers our station had decided to hire).  We put our people in matching blazers and gave them lapel pins so viewers wouldn't forget the image.  And of course we got a new set and redesigned the graphics (big-ticket budgetary items that I have yet to hear a rank-and-file viewer ever comment on). 

The result?  The viewers still called it "the news."  Sometimes, to show their loyalty, they used the station's channel number before "the news," regardless of the adjective the station had chosen for itself.  And with each change, they watched just a little less. 

Then the marketeers started messing with the content, deciding on the basis of surveys of a few hundred people exactly what it was the masses wanted to see.  So we segmented and labelled and promoted.  We played with the story count and the order and the flow.  And we changed the set and the graphics again.  It changed share points in a lot of places, but once again, the viewers watched just a little bit less. 

Now, TV news viewing is down by roughly a third over the last 20 years.  And the marketeers are telling us we just haven't gotten the brand name across to them, that we have to change the sign-offs to reinforce the brand name, that if only we could get the viewers to understand the "branding," they'd come back in droves. 

Uh-huh.  Sure. 

The fact is that we have allowed the product to erode while we keep changing the packaging.  It matters little to the fleeting viewers that we've got a really cool box.  It's what inside the box that's driving them away. 

And what have we done about the contents?  As an industry, we now enjoy the public's trust only slightly less than politicians do.  What have we done to win it back? 

Allow me to propose a few simple concepts. 

• First, we've got a problem on our hands that's a little bigger than "branding."  "Branding" has to do with logos and graphics and on-air looks.  What is it we want to brand?  I don't know anyone - and I don't think the audience experts do, either - who has ever zapped the channel to see a logo.

• Second, the only thing any TV newscast ought to be selling, the only thing any TV newscast has to sell, is its credibility.  That's our product.  Is what we're putting on the air - from our weather forecasts to our sports scores to our news stories - true?  Is it fair?  Was it honorably obtained?  How do we handle it when we fall short of those goals?  Do we fess up to our errors and vow to do better? 

• Third, no matter how we box it or bag it or brand it, ten pounds of manure is still ten pounds of manure.  The smell is a dead giveaway.

We can survey it and quantify it and graph it, but the fact remains that we're in the business of selling our credibility.  We're on the block every minute we're on the air.  Every time we broadcast, every story we do, every assertion we make is another test of our honesty, our integrity, and our truthfulness, as individuals and as an industry. 

And for a long time, it's a test we've barely been passing. 

There are many things we need to be doing, but chief among them is remembering that it's the product that matters to us - and to our viewers.  We need reminders, and we're not likely to get them from the marketeers.  That means we need to look inward - to ourselves and to each other - for reinforcement. 

For what it's worth, I may be hopelessly "retro," but the strongest example of broadcast "branding" that comes to my mind is the Chevrolet logo being burned into the map of Ben Cartwright's Ponderosa. 

I invite your feelings - which, with your permission, I'll incorporate in future columns.  Email me at skolnick@newstrench.com. 

© 1997  Paul Skolnick 

_____ 

 PAUL SKOLNICK is the managing editor of Thunder & Lightning News Service in Belleair Bluffs, FL.  For twenty years he has been slogging through the news trenches as a reporter, a writer, an assignment editor, and a producer.