🔒In new GM role, NBC CT’s Guerrero seeks out younger, more diverse audience

When Hank Guerrero appears on video conference to chat about his new role as general manager at NBC Connecticut and Telemundo Connecticut, he’s at his desk in an open-collar shirt — much as he appears in his official headshot from the station.

The smiling, relaxed and youthful GM look appears authentic to the man, but it’s also very much in line with a station policy that’s trying to speak to a younger, perhaps more unbuttoned demographic.

“They are interested in what’s happening in their local communities,” said the 44-year-old Guerrero of those elusive millennial and Gen Z viewers. “What we’re quickly finding is that they’re using alternate platforms to get their news and information.”

NBC is attempting to meet that generational challenge in a couple of ways. First, through putting the brand in front of people on social media.

“We’ve got some TikTok superusers in the newsroom that we really do lean on to create content that resonates with folks on those platforms,” he said, “and really to try to bridge that generational gap.”

In another attempt to serve that younger, on-demand audience, NBC CT launched its local news offering on a streaming channel in June 2022, followed in November by a regional Spanish language streaming service, Telemundo Noticias Noreste.

“We continue to invest and change the way that we interact with our streaming platforms,” said Guerrero. “We’re a little bit more nimble with those platforms than we would have been otherwise. They give us the ability to be hyper-local. If we want to go into extending coverage of something that’s happening very locally, we can do that.”

Guerrero has moved from his previous role as vice president of sales for WVIT and WRDM to fill the top slot, following Diane Hannes’ retirement.

He takes the helm at a time of both opportunity and challenge. The 2020 pandemic lockdowns provided a moment of renewed relevance for local TV news as more people sought localized information in an unprecedented situation, boosting ratings.

But at the same time, the generational disconnect persists, with a Pew Research survey taken in 2020 showing half or more of adults 50 and older are still turning to TV for news often, and 68% of those 65 and older. At the other end of the age spectrum, just 16% of adults ages 18 to 29 often look to TV for news.

And that’s the issue with the old model of “appointment” news at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.

“There are so many ways for people to get news and information now that relying on the six o’clock news, as people once did, is almost a quaint notion,” said Duby McDowell, principal of Hartford-based McDowell Communications, and a former TV reporter.

That’s not just a challenge for the people making content.

“The TV salesperson of a few decades ago was simply hoping that the local car dealer would buy an ad on the six o’clock news,” said McDowell. “For the salesperson of today, it’s putting together a much more complicated offering.”

Authentic, relatable brand

Guerrero, whose background is entirely in sales, said he believes that new level of complexity should be viewed as an opportunity.

“We can put a fundamentally cohesive ad plan in front of a client or an advertiser or a community partner that can constructively touch all of our viewers,” he said. “No matter the platform, they’re consuming our content. Our advertisers have responded to that.”

But being seen as an authentic and relatable brand on newer platforms like social media is not as straightforward as simply repackaging what’s appearing on the TV screen.

“They can absolutely compete, but it’s going to require a rebrand of sorts,” said Mercy Quaye, president of The Narrative Project, a New Haven-based marketing and communications firm.

“If folks see NBC 30 as a channel and not a social media influencer in the space, then I think it’s going to be hard to capture their attention,” Quaye added, referring to younger demographics.

Some of that rebrand may have to do with the personality that news organizations can project.

“A bit of a more personal touch, a bit of behind-the-scenes palace intrigue, things that allow you to pull back the curtain and say, ‘this is who we are,’” said Quaye.

Social media can also develop into a useful two-way street for TV journalists, said Rebecca Castellani of Quiet Corner Communications, a Connecticut-based digital marketing and content strategy agency.

“The Connecticut subreddit is a great place for journalists to scour new ideas,” she said. “There’s a really interesting way to mine content out of social media while also still being able to use it as a vehicle to get primary quotes and keep your ear to the ground.”

For older generations, a sense of engagement with the news depended on seeing a trusted anchor on the nightly broadcast, but now there’s more of an opportunity for genuine interaction.

“That desire to feel like you’re connected to the news,” said Castellani. “People have always wanted to interact. I just think they didn’t have as many outlets to do so.”

“TV news is really, really hard,” said Rich Hanley, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University. “It’s like a general circulation newspaper. You gotta please everyone, but you have to do so in a very narrow window of time.”

Hanley said compared to the decline of the traditional print newspaper industry, local TV has maintained a level of stability. In part that’s because there are fewer stations and the market size they serve is larger, which can make them an appealing advertising buy.

It’s also because of the big cyclical boost they get from election advertising dollars.

“Congressional campaigns pump up the revenue,” said Hanley.

Bilingual news

NBC Universal made a very deliberate play for the Hispanic market with its acquisition of Telemundo in 2018.

In Connecticut, Telemundo offers a Spanish-language newscast local to New England; it’s anchored out of Boston. NBC Connecticut’s newsroom hosts a bilingual Telemundo news reporter, Doris Bardales.

Guerrero said the opportunity this presents was hammered home by the 2020 census.

“The state’s population grew about one percent,” he said. “But the Hispanic population in Connecticut grew 30 (percent). So it just highlighted the importance of speaking to this population in the language that they prefer.”

He points to the synergies of having a bilingual newsroom where local information like severe weather warnings and school closures can now be given in both languages.

And while the pandemic ratings boost may have flattened somewhat, he said the social and economic changes of the pandemic continue to resonate in TV.

“People aren’t in 9-to-5s anymore, so the way that they consume their content has changed. We’ve tried to innovate and evolve with that,” Guerrero said.