The #1 Thing Every News Tease Must Do

No doubt you've seen news stories and social media posts about package thieves stealing stuff from mailboxes and front porches. The scenarios are similar. The delivery service drops off the package. Later, a thief approaches the home, gives a quick look over their shoulder, then grabs the package and bolts from the scene.

The news report will have essential who, what, when, where, why and how information. As it should. Viewers would expect to hear from a crime prevention expert offering practical tips to dissuade would be bad guys (have packages delivered to work, notify delivery service to leave stuff behind a gate, etc.). There's nothing wrong with these types of stories. In fact, they're generally timely and have good actionable information viewers appreciate.

But how do you tease it? It's one of those stories that tends to pop up on a somewhat regular basis. "You've heard about all the delivery thefts popping up in the area. We're gonna show you another one. Today at 6."

Good luck with that.

KSL 5 in Salt Lake City had this familiar story right around the holidays. Did they run the generic doorstop delivery theft promo? Nope. Did they bore viewers to death with a predictable promo donut promising the latest details? Not at all.

Instead, they hit it out of the park. By focusing on the #1 thing every news tease must have. Take a look...

Bet you didn't see that coming!

What the KSL promotion team did exceptionally well is to focus on the most surprising part of the story. They bypassed the nitty-gritty details and got right to the interesting and intriguing stuff that motivates viewers to watch. This is not your typical burglar steals package story, and neither is the tease.

Bottom Line: Teases are not fact dumps. They are little snippets of surprising information that bore deep inside your viewers' brains and hearts. A little cliffhanger they can't wait to see. How can you NOT watch that?!

No matter the story, begin writing each tease by asking yourself one simple question: What's the surprise?

Greg is an audience retention specialist with 602 Communications who has trained over 100 forward-thinking television newsrooms across the U.S. and Canada. His two-day audience retention workshop -- for producers, reporters, anchors, meteorologists and promotion teams -- teaches a specific skill set that drives audience retention in and out of newscasts, social media click-throughs, and simplifies daily workflow. Talk to Greg right now. 210.587.7000