I had the privilege of hearing NBC’s Maya Eaglin tell her story at the 2024 Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas Awards – where UNC Sports Xtra won Best Student Sportscast! After graduating from Elon University with a degree in Journalism, Eaglin landed a job at NBC in production. She had no intention of being on camera but was encouraged to apply for a digital reporting job. She got the job and began working with NBC’s Stay Tuned.
Stay Tuned is the first daily news show designed specifically for Snapchat’s discovery page. The primary target is Gen Z individuals, born between the mid-90s and the early 2010s. Instead of posting segments from NBC’s traditional outlets, Stay Tuned reporters tailor their content to fit the medium by scaling the videos to the vertical frame of a phone and having their reporters film their “standups” themselves. NBC created Stay Tuned in response to the Pew Research report that 90% of news consumers under 30 consume some news from digital devices, while only 45 percent consume some news from TV.
Stay Tuned launched on Snapchat in 2017 and garnered one million subscribers in under three weeks. Now, it has 9.64 million subscribers on Snapchat. Stay Tuned has also ventured to YouTube, with 377 thousand subscribers, TikTok, with 1.6 million followers, and Instagram, with 115 thousand followers. Many of Stay Tuned’s stories air on MSNBC shows as well. They are an incredible example of a legacy media company bridging the information gap between their traditional viewers and young people.
Now is the time for legacy media companies to invest in the digital world. While many independent journalists and influencers are finding success delivering news on social media, NBC and other legacy outlets have something they do not: credibility and editorial standards. These outlets have years of reliability to their name and teams of people fact-checking their work. The only challenge remaining is navigating the ever-demanding nature of social media to remain relevant and maintain engagement. Stay Tuned has tackled this challenge by posting consistently and fully adapting its content to each platform, as discussed above. Legacy outlets that meet the demands of social media—without compromising journalistic integrity—can lead the digital news space just as they have in traditional media.
Check out Stay Tuned’s content and let me know your thoughts!