TV News Producers Need PR More Than Ever and the Numbers Prove It
The rise of AI discoverability and GEO is making earned media more important than it has ever been. The key findings of our “Understanding the Evolving Media Landscape” report show that local TV news may be your most important opportunity to reach millions of people with earned media. This also increases your chance to be discovered even after the initial broadcast.
We found 94% of local TV news producers are open to being pitched. That’s the highest during the more than 25 years we’ve been doing the report. Given the state of local TV newsrooms (less staff and significantly more hours of content including broadcast, digital, social and online to program), PR is now a staff extension of the shrinking newsroom.
Brand Spokespeople Over Third-Party Experts
One of the report's significant findings involves who producers want on camera. 90% of producers prefer to interview in-house brand spokespeople rather than third-party experts.
For communications teams, this is a huge opportunity. Featuring your own executives and subject matter experts does more than generate coverage. It builds brand association with the topics and questions that audiences, and increasingly AI platforms, are seeking answers to.
This allows your brand to become associated with the answers to questions people are asking across the large language models. In an era where generative engine optimization, or GEO, is shaping what gets discovered online, that association has compounding value.
The Interview Format Has Permanently Changed
The logistics of broadcast PR have shifted as well. A striking 94% of producers expect to continue using Zoom or similar platforms for interviews, a practice that accelerated during the pandemic and has now become standard operating procedure. For brands, this lowers the barrier to nationwide broadcast reach and makes media tours more efficient than ever.
Editorial Themes Gaining Traction in 2026
We also found significant interest in covering the widest range of topics. The report identifies that a significant majority of producers are interested in covering: health and wellness, food and beverage, technology, travel, personal finance, retail, and consumer goods. 94% of producers will continue to use Zoom or similar services to feature interviews on the program. This has made it significantly easier for organizations to get their spokespeople interviewed nationwide.
The Bigger Picture
The fundamentals of storytelling have not changed. Credibility, clarity, and relevance still determine what gets covered. What has changed is that stations now need this content to fill their broadcast hours and the value of earned media no longer ends with the broadcast. It lives on social media, station websites, YouTube and, most importantly, through AI discoverability.
You can download the report here, or email AI@dssimonmedia.com to receive a copy.
