Nightly News... Let's Play The Social Media Game!

Carolyn Menyes
c.menyes@gmail.com
@athousandmph

Over the past month or so, I've established that I find NBC Nightly News to be a good, comprehensive news source, albeit a little outdated in concept. And, it's still successful. According to The Washington Post/Nielsen, Brian Williams' show is the most watched of the three major networks, with 7.8 million viewers last week.

My curiosity for this week, however, is how NBC Nightly News and other NBC affiliates have moved into the 21st century with social media.

First, I looked at the Twitter feed for ol' blue eyes himself, Brian Williams.

And... uh...

#awkward

It's verified! It has a profile picture! It has a custom background... And it's totally unused. For an anchor on the No. 1 nightly news show, you think NBC would make BriWi tweet a little bit to engage the audience and pull in a younger demographic.

But, alright, that's fine. Not everyone has to be on Twitter.

So, I decided to take a look at the show's page. I particularly was interested in seeing supplementary material, perhaps an online component to the broadcast stories. Of course, since politics and the election are the focus of this course and this blog, I wanted to get a sampling of how Nightly News dealt with the election there.

The answer was... not much. Since NBC Nightly News is a half-hour, nightly broadcast, it covers a wide variety of things that are reflected in the tweets. For the last week, actually, there were two tweets about President Obama and his addresses to the U.N. and one tweet about how Mitt Romney and President Obama were preparing for the upcoming debates.

For your political Twitter coverage from the Peacock, you have to follow @NBCPolitics. Though this is not specifically a Nightly News twitter, I found this feed had a good amount of stories and links to stories, most of which were focused on the election.


 So, NBC Nightly News does not make a good use of their social media, which I feel like reflects their older demographic. However, I know people my age like Brian Williams, respect him and find him engaging, relatable and handsome. I think Nightly News could grab this audience by using Twitter and other social media sites.