Lew Leone is the gm of New York City Fox-owned station WNYW. Like other Fox-owned station general managers, Leone isn’t shy about voicing his opinion whether on social media or in his on-air editorials called Lew’s Views.
Leone has worked at all four of the network-owned local stations in New York. Before coming to WNYW in 2005, Leone was the GM of New York CBS-owned station WCBS. He’s been vp of Sales at NBC-owned station WNBC and he started his career at ABC-owned station WABC.
TVSpy spoke with Leone to get his take on the changing face of local TV, the role of social media, and the secret to an effective editorial.
TVSpy: Having been in the business 30 years, you’ve seen a lot of changes in local TV. How have you personally adapted?
Leone: Well, it used to be the ratings were a lot higher, there wasn’t even an Internet back then. I’m lucky to have lived through the whole evolution and I never like to say that I’ve seen everything because I haven’t. But I’ve seen a lot. Since I’ve lived through so much change it doesn’t bother me. I always expect things to change so now in my infinite wisdom I try to anticipate change as much as possible.
TVSpy: Does local TV still have a place in this time-shifted, cord-cutting world?
Leone: Definitely. Definitely. And, you know, the struggle is going to be to make sure that it remains relevant. I think it will. I think there has to be some type of concentration of assets. I think there’s too many TV stations and there’s probably too many of the same type of newscasts. We saw a concentration in the print world. I think you’re going to see that in the TV station world. Maybe you don’t have six or seven TV stations in the market. You have two or three or four. So I think that will certainly keep the business alive. In my belief the strong will survive. There will always be a need for them and you just have to make sure that you remain competitive.
TVSpy: It seems like many stations are opting for local news over syndicated programming. With that being said is WNYW going to launch a 4:00 p.m. newscast?
Leone: There’s no current plans to launch at 4:00 p.m. We currently do Monday through Friday because we do eight hours of live local news a day. It wouldn’t be hard for us to add news but I think at a certain point, we’re not a news station in terms of 24/7. We’re not there yet. And there are local, especially on cable you have news, you know, NewYork1 and News12. So those things exist but I also think people want to be entertained as well. I’m actually glad that NBC is going to launch a 4:00 news here because we’re going to put Harry [Connick Jr.’s new show] at 4:00 and so they’re making my job easier. It takes away one competitor in terms of any type of entertainment informational programming.
TVSpy: You probably run into a lot of personalities in New York. Can you talk about the second mayor of New York? What’s your take on Donald Trump’s run for president?
Leone: Donald Trump over the years has been a friend of Good Day. He has a very good relationship with Rosanna Scotto and Greg Kelly, our morning anchors. Greg will say ‘We were there when Trump announced.’ I remember that morning, [Greg] told me ‘Something kind of special happened. Something was in the air when he made that announcement.’ He said ‘I can’t tell you what it was but there was something there.’ And he still talks about that day. He was right. I mean whatever you feel about Donald Trump, Greg had a sense that he was going to make some noise and he has.
TVSpy: You have a fairly large social presence. What works on Twitter as a general manager of a large station like yours?
Leone: I think it’s a tremendous way to communicate, to seek information, to find information, to connect with people that have the same interests as you do. I found early on that when I do editorials like the one I did on the horse carriage issue and Mayor de Blasio, he said on day one he’s going to ban the horse carriages in Central Park. I built up a large following and a network of people that had the same viewpoint I did on that issue. That really helped me both craft my editorials and gain a following. I did the same with the Upper East Side dump which is being constructed now. It’s a marine transfer station on the Upper East Side. It was something that made no sense to me and a lot of other people and I connected with a whole other part of the community.
Back in the day general managers would do these big we ascertainments where you meet with community leaders. I essentially do a virtual ascertainment with viewers and constituents through my Twitter account. So it’s a tremendous aggregator of information and I can connect one on one, I can connect in a group.
TVSpy: What’s your biggest challenge as GM of a station in New York City?
Leone: Every day is different and I think just anticipating being out ahead of change. I’m now up on Snapchat. I think Snapchat is going to be what Facebook is today. Right now it’s really Facebook and Instagram that are the two most important social media platforms in my mind, and next is going to be Snapchat. I don’t know if you saw the Wall Street Journal has a presence there now. They hired five people and they’re putting Snapchat stories on their channel every day. We sit down and talk to all the interns that come in, ask them questions and the most recent round was ‘What’s the first thing you look at on your phone in the morning?’ Every single one of them said Snapchat. But I think to anticipate the next platform where we need to be digitally is a challenge. We monetize social media to a certain extent now but I think in the future we’re going to be able to monetize it to an even greater extent, especially given the fact that we have reporters and professional journalists as opposed to just citizen journalists that don’t have the same type of credibility.
TVSpy: A lot of GMs don’t do editorials. What advice would you give a GM at a local station who wants to do them?
Leone: Well first of all you have to know what you’re talking about so I would stick with topics that you know. I’ve done a ton on education and actually spent five years on my local school board, so I felt that that gave me the credibility to speak on those issues because I lived in that world. Play to your strength. Don’t go into a subject that you don’t know a lot about. I think you want to pick topics that you can have some type of call to action. I always try to have a call to action. I didn’t want to do any media training because I just wanted to be myself and I didn’t want to come off like “Oh this guy’s too slick, or whatever.” I was terrible at first. I got a lot better just by doing it and got a lot more comfortable in terms of delivery and presentation skills. I know a lot of people struggle with that and I did. You just have to do it.
I think it’s a differentiator. It gives a face to the station. People like having someone that they can write to or email or call if they have an issue or problem. I think that’s important and that just helps make more of a connection. I didn’t put my hand up and say ‘I really want to do this’ but in a discussion with my boss Jack Abernethy, we thought that this was something that could set us apart. And, you know, he pushed me to go outside my comfort zone and I think its worked.