The Video News Release

The video news release (VNR) is a growing market. With cost cutting rife throughout the media, it can be hard to get a camera crew and reporter out to a remote location unless it involves crime, a serious road accident or something like that. Business stories very often don't make the cut. But the idea of course is to offer it in the hope that it gets picked up by the mainstream broadcast media. For this reason, they have to be made to the standards expected from the BBC, ITN, Sky News etc. When they're sent out to those organisations, they should offer a number of options for their producers. There should be the finished feature, shot, linked and cut professionally. But you also have to give the broadcaster the chance to put their own voice to the piece (it allows on of their own people to add the station sign-off), so you should include the same feature but without a commentary track. You should also offer interview clips which can be run by themselves, and extracts of location shots from the video – the idea here is at least to let the station have what are known as “wallpaper” shots when a brief summary is being read by a news anchor. But even when the story isn't used, there is still value to be gained. The VNR can be uploaded to YouTube and placed on your own website. This means that the potential audience is global and not just the area covered by (say) your local ITV company. In such cases, it can include your own web address and other contact information the broadcasters wouldn't use. And you have to make sure to put enough keywords into the boxes around the story so that Google and other search engines can find it.