By Paul Greeley, 817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

WEEK-TV, Gray’s NBC, ABC, MyNetworkTV and CW affiliated stations in Peoria, has a reputation for creative wildly imaginative news promos.

Like this “Alice in Weatherland” promo from a few months ago, which is, the team admits, a little over the top.

In a further tribute to their creativity, three examples of their station promos have been nominated in the small market category for the 2024 GEMA Awards, what used to be Promax.

I wanted to check in with the team at WEEK-TV to see what new creative they’re airing, and to talk through their brainstorming process.

The team consists of Tim Campbell, WEEK’s CSD, and two marketing producers, Tom Pokarney and Ryan Rogy.

I asked, when brainstorming, do you work together or alone and then get together?

“Instead of going away and coming back later, we just come up with ideas right then,” Rogy says. “We sit around and talk about it. Sometimes we get a little out there with our creativity or ideas or concepts, but we always reel it back to find out what’s the ultimate goal with it.”

Sometimes when you have a wild idea, you must make sure your reach doesn’t exceed your grasp.

Like in the case of a weekly high school prep rally promo.

“We wanted a boxing ring or a wrestling ring, and we wanted to have the athletes come in and clash,” Pokarney says.

“We thought it would be fun if we got athletes from different schools and we’ll shoot them in front of some really cool, smoky light,” Campbell says.

But then the reality of production set in.

Instead of a boxing ring, the setting turned into a school bus.

The music for the promo is from the station’s Universal Music Library.

Gray, like most local broadcast companies, sees value in the streaming content they provide.

But not everyone can find that content easily. WEEK wanted to educate viewers about how to find and use it.

Campbell says he researched online instructional manuals and wrote a script.

“I wanted to come up with something that was clear to my parents because my parents were the target for that,” Rogy says.

“Real Men Wear Pink” has been nominated for a GEMA Award in the Special category.

Pokarney says aside from the drone shot, everything else was shot on his iPhone.

“We knew we had to shoot a bunch of anchors in a very short window and shoot it quickly,” Pokarney says. “The iPhone was going to be the best option for us at that point.”

Here are two more WEEK-TV promos that have been nominated in the GEMA Awards.

NOTE:  First, there was BPME, Broadcast Promotion and Marketing Executives, which became Promax. Now there’s GEMA, Global Entertainment Marketing Academy. There may not be an annual station summit, but the 2024 GEMA Awards still generates excitement among local TV station creatives.

If your station has been nominated for a 2024 GEMA Award, and you want to share it, send me a link and a paragraph about it as I’ll be showcasing some of the nominations before the winners are announced later this month.

Paul Greeley, 817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

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