WGCU of Fort Myers, Fla. is building a weekly television news series with much bigger ambitions than the standard Friday-night news round-up.
Southwest Florida in Focus, a half-hour weekly show that mixes local interviews, news reports and community features, launched Sept. 13 as a regional program that aims to grow into an hour-long daily series over three years.
As a signal of WGCU’s aspirations, Southwest Florida in Focus is produced on a hand-me-down set from PBS News Hour. On a visit to News Hour-producing station WETA in Arlington, Va., WGCU GM Corey Lewis noticed the set under a tarp and asked if he could use it for the new TV show.
WGCU is a dual licensee with broadcast signals reaching into 12 counties in southwest Florida. The station “has long been foundationally strong with our radio news content,” said Pam James, EP of content. With Southwest Florida in Focus, “we’re really just launching the visual version of our radio team’s work,” she said.
With its start up as a half-hour of interviews and local news coverage on a mix of topics, the show has been put to the test as hurricane season intensified over Florida’s Gulf coast.
The Oct. 4 episode, only the fourth since the show’s launch, reported solely on Hurricane Helene and how communities in southwest Florida responded to it. Anchor Sandra Viktorova, a former investigative reporter for Miami’s NBC affiliate, and WGCU photojournalist Andrea Melendez reported a field-produced story about the residents affected by the hurricane. Studio-based interviews included a professor who studies coastal changes and a social worker who discussed the mental health impacts of the hurricane. Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, also appeared on the program to discuss why people don’t follow evacuation orders.
The long-term goal is to achieve a balance of national, international and local news for WGCU’s television and digital viewers, Lewis said. And, eventually, to build the station’s capacity to deliver and sustain a daily, hour-long video-based news program.
“The secret sauce of the success of NPR is a one-stop-shop for local, national and international content,” he said. “But on most PBS stations, it’s just a stop for national and international content. For local community events, typically around those shows, we need to add that critical component of local news on the TV side, which we didn’t really have.”
Southwest Florida in Focus will continue as a weekly, half-hour program in its first year, then expand to nightly in fall 2025, he said. In year three, it will expand into a daily hour of local news.
Seeking donors to ‘jump on board’
A Boston donor funded the first year of the show with a $250,000 gift, according to Lewis. A donor from Florida provided $90,000 for its transition into nightly production. The $90,000 gift helps the station’s fundraising team attract more donors.
“We were very grateful for it because it’s now the mechanism to get other people to jump on board,” Lewis said.
The expansion will bring the show’s annual cost to about $500,000, Lewis said. WGCU won’t ramp up to nightly production until it has raised a total of $1.5 million, which would cover the show’s costs for three years.
Lewis wants to be able to provide job security to the five people WGCU would need to hire for nightly production, he said.
“A lot of nonprofits start things when they have some money, and then, a year or two later, they have to change course,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”
Internal breaks for sponsors
The funding plan anticipates donations will cover about half the show’s costs long-term, Lewis said. Sponsorships will provide the balance.
The format of Southwest Florida in Focus provides two internal breaks — ten minutes into the program and ten minutes before its ending — for sponsor messages. That configuration aims to build audience flow from BBC News America, which leads into Southwest Florida in Focus at 6:30 on Friday evenings, Lewis said. Each episode repeats at 11 p.m. Fridays and 6:30 p.m. Saturdays, Lewis said. PBS News Weekend leads into the Saturday repeat.
With its emphasis on “interviews with thought leaders for a thoughtful audience,” Southwest Florida in Focus isn’t “perishable news,” Lewis said. “It can run a couple times each day and that will maximize the impact that we have and amortize the expense that we’re going for.”
Each segment is released individually on YouTube and social media alongside full-length versions of the episodes.
Revenue from other WGCU projects will also help keep the lights on for Southwest Florida in Focus. The station has invested in infrastructure and doubled its staff from 32 to 64 employees, Lewis said. Revenues from previous initiatives, such as adding beat reporters to the radio news team, help support the new show.
“The reason why [Southwest Florida] in Focus could launch at $250,000 as a weekly is because there’s a larger infrastructure at the station from our annual revenue,” he said.
Built around interviews
Each 30-episode of Southwest Florida in Focus puts the region’s healthcare, education, workforce, transportation, arts and culture in focus, Lewis said. The format leans into interview-based segments to keep costs low.
“That’s why it’s so inexpensive,” Lewis said. “Intellectual capital is not very costly. …The thought leaders in our community are more than happy to help our whole community understand the issues, and that doesn’t cost anything, either.”
WGCU’s radio news staff have also adapted their reporting for Southwest Florida in Focus, according to James. The video and radio news teams meet at least twice a week — if not every day — to determine which radio stories to bring to the TV and digital viewers, James said.
The style of the program gives reporters and other news staff more room to report than they’ve had in the past, James said. “I think they actually appreciate it because then they’re not constrained by … trying to do something in a 90-second or 60-second turn.”
As for broadcast viewership, TV ratings for the first two episodes improved on the programs it replaced on Fridays, Lewis said. The Saturday evening repeat, meanwhile, is having a hard time competing against football games for viewers.
“We’ll see if Saturday 6:30 p.m. is the best time period for the third run,” he said. “We may experiment a little bit … and see what else we can do.”
The WGCU News’ YouTube channel, home to videos from Southwest Florida in Focus and other news programs, has 295 subscribers.
For Amy Shumaker, WGCU’s associate GM of content, producing Southwest Florida in Focus has required the staff to learn new skills. The show has improved each week since its launch, she said.
“From technology to editorial to execution, we’re getting all those things well oiled and I think every week you can feel it getting there in all those areas.”
Advice on program design
The re-purposed News Hour set, which WGCU acquired for the cost of shipping, was updated to fit PBS’ logo guidelines, according to James.
The News Hour team has helped support Southwest Florida in Focus in other ways, Lewis said. Geoff Bennett, co-anchor of PBS News Hour, and Sara Just, senior EP of PBS News Hour Productions, advised Lewis on key elements of program design, such as the length of segments and cost-effective ways to conduct in-depth interviews. Just and Bennett assured him that securing interviews for the broadcast would be easy and cost-efficient, he said.
That’s why he sees the news show as “a model for public stations across the country,” Lewis said. “We do not need to have 50 reporters chasing all over our communities to be live in front of the closed courthouse.”