Tips for Making the Most of the Modern Broadcast Ecosystem

What this means in practice is that every media brand caters to increasingly fragmented audiences through several channels – from podcast to livestreams – and there are many teams, all contending with slightly different challenges, sitting under one roof. 

For PRs, this is where the opportunity lies. Broadcast now acts as the trigger for a much wider cycle of attention. A live moment sparks clips, conversation and follow-on coverage, with audiences encountering the story in multiple places over time. The most effective campaigns are built in waves, not one-offs, designed to grow rather than peak and disappear. So how do you make that happen?

The tips below come from conversations with BBC Breakfast, Channel 4 News, Times Radio, Bloomberg, the PRs behind campaigns like the award-winning Cannes Lions AI Granny dAIsy, and our expert team. For a more in-depth look, download our report, written by journalist Anna Stewart, below. 

Download the Report

1. Start with the live moment and allow everything to follow from there

Broadcast still sets the agenda. When Virgin Media O2 launched dAIsy, their AI granny built to waste scammers’ time, they didn’t start with social media. They started with a live slot on Good Morning Britain, knowing that a strong broadcast moment would give every other platform something to react to, share and build on.

As Head of Corporate Communications Luke Stallard describes it, once that first wave landed, it became a flywheel. Channel 5, Channel 4, Radio 2 all came calling, asking for assets and interviews, and the campaign achieved 2 billion social impressions, many of which were shares and remixes of broadcast moments. 

Land the live moment well, and you hand the internet something brilliant to play with.

2. Think in three waves from day one

Wave 1 is the live broadcast hit. Wave 2 is the social surge – the clips, the reactions, the shares. Wave 3 is the longevity layer; the evergreen content that keeps finding new audiences months or even years later. Charlotte Speedy at Guide Dogs saw this firsthand when a three-year-old YouTube Playlist, The Journey of a Guide Dog, kept pulling audiences back far beyond the original launch and promotion cycle.

To achieve the most impact possible, PRs have to plan for all three waves, not just the first. This means taking into account the assets, content and long-tail approach needed to ride both the social surge and evergreen layer,  thinking ahead to the clips that will travel, the playlists that will keep content discoverable, and the follow-up stories that will bring audiences back when the moment is right.

3. Know which door to knock on

How can PRs make the most of every opportunity presented by the modern media landscape? The question isn’t “how do we get on TV?” It’s “which of the many doors inside this media brand leads to our audience?”

Bloomberg alone runs live TV, podcasts, newsletters, TikTok, YouTube, long-read explainers and a new weekend culture product. This broad scope is reflected in journalists’ thinking. Channel 4 News presenter Ayshah Tull, for example, says she is constantly considering what stories will land live at 7pm and what will travel back out into feeds in the hours after. 

Each door is different, so it’s vital to strategise and understand which one will best achieve your aims before you knock.

4. Lead with humanity, not headlines

Every journalist in our 2026 report said some version of the same thing. BBC Radio 5 Live’s Tony Livesey put it most plainly: “I never search out controversy. It’s a one-hit wonder. I always go for humanity.”

The moments that travel – the postmasters on BBC Breakfast, Toby Dicker in tears on Sky News, Sean Dilley’s guide dog reunion – all worked because they were honest, not engineered. Brief your contributors well, then let them be themselves.

5. Make the pitch specific and instantly usable

Newsrooms are leaner than ever. BBC Breakfast’s Caroline Turner is clear about what happens to generic pitches: they don’t get read, even if the story buried in paragraph seven is genuinely good.

Calum Macdonald’s advice cuts straight to it. Give journalists an angle and a couple of bullet points. Tell them who is available and when. Make it easy to say yes. Producers are not looking for more work; they’re looking for fewer, better conversations with people who understand their audience.

6. Don’t ignore the regional runway

Some of the strongest national waves start locally. Charlotte Speedy at Guide Dogs noticed that regional social content was quietly building national momentum, something working well in Sheffield or the Midlands would start attracting attention far beyond its original locality.

Regional broadcast shouldn’t be an afterthought. Not only can a story which resonates on a local level be a signal that you have something worth scaling, but a regional strategy can underpin a social media campaign with nation-spanning reach if executed correctly. 

7. Build relationships, not just coverage

The best outcomes in the report came from relationships nurtured over time. For example, Channel 4’s Ayshah Tull still remembers the PR who sent her a link after a story aired, simply to say thank you. As Caz Nicholls at MatchFit puts it, the strongest broadcast work is co-created, not parachuted in as a finished piece. Ask producers what they’re looking for. Build something together.

8. Own the long tail

Once a campaign ends, most PRs move on. The ones who don’t are the ones who unlock Wave 3. Follow-up interviews, playlists, impact updates, and evergreen angles – these are the tools that keep a story alive and finding new audiences long after the live moment has passed.

You can’t game the algorithm, but as Anna Stewart writes in the report, you can control where a story lands and how well it’s built to travel. Stack the odds in your favour.

For the full picture – including in-depth case studies on dAIsy, Guide Dogs and the Salon Employers Association – download The Many Waves of Broadcasting here.