While the Super Bowl sludged like a slow pour of Griffin's syrup this past Sunday, News 9 – which is owned by that very same Griffin family – dropped a new ad campaign that focuses on the channel's local ownership and Oklahoma roots.
It shows frontline faces like Kelly Ogle, David Payne, and Lacey Swope – along with some behind-the-scenes News 9 employees – spending happy-smiley time with their families, all while Serious Voice-Over Guy talks about how News 9 is a locally owned news channel that's not beholden to out-of-state corporate interests.
Check it out:
News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |
That's cool. I'd much rather get my local TV news from conservative capitalist syrup moguls who work with our state's ruling class to misinform the public on behalf of industry, distort literal facts and push bad policy than a conservative national media conglomerate that only cares about making money. The local guys definitely have my best interests in mind.
That being said, the campaign feels a bit misguided.
Sure, News 9 competes with Channel 4, Channel 5 and Channel 25 for ratings, stories and ad revenue, but their real competition – and threat to locally owned independence – are things like Netflix, Facebook, Fortnight, Twitter, Hulu and everything else in this world that's more fun, easy and enjoyable to watch on a screen than TV news. I don't care how locally owned you are or how many Oklahomans you employ, good luck competing with all that.
