New York Times announces new weekly TV show

The New York Times produces more than a hundred videos each month for its website and other digital platforms.

Some of those videos will reach a targeted television audience starting next week, with the premiere of "NYTV." The half-hour show will air Mondays at 8:30 p.m. on New York's flagship local station, NYC life (that's channel 25 in and around the five boroughs; lowercase spelling intentional), under the banner of NYC Media, the city's official TV, radio and online network.

Each episode will feature a selection of the latest New York-centric culture, lifestyle and fashion-oriented videos produced by Times journalists, drawing heavily on recurring segments by marquee talents, including Bill Cunningham ("On the Street"), Frank Bruni ("Tipsy Diaries") and A.O. Scott ("Critics' Picks").

"What NYTV will be doing," said Gerald Marzorati, the former Times Magazine editor who now oversees new ventures as an assistant managing editor at the paper, in an email to The Cutline, "is assembling local segments the Times has created, shot and made available on our site into a program for a platform--television--we have no presence in right now."

This is certainly the most ambitious, though not the first, Times foray into the small screen. Urban affairs correspondent Sam Roberts hosts a weekly Saturday show on NY1 previewing content from the Sunday edition, and there was the Times-branded program that politics scribe John Harwood used to host for MSNBC.

"NYTV" also shows the Grey Lady edging more broadly into video, which certainly couldn't hurt its efforts to convince readers that Times content is worth paying for not only in print, but also on the web, tablets and smart phones. (The Times began charging for unlimited digital access in March.)

"The push--and it's a slow, careful push--is simply part of our commitment to be a news organization available on as many platforms and in as many media as we can be," said Marzorati. "You saw video much more front and center in our coverage of the uprising in Cairo, for example, than you would have a year or two ago. And there are a couple of new webcasts in the works or in the planning stages."

"NYTV" follows a similar cross-platform initiative the Times unveiled earlier this month, in which theaters will screen high-def Times videos ahead of movie trailers.

"It's a smart move: captive audience + art house audience + audience sick of being served up trivia questions about George Clooney as it waits for movie trailers to start = an audience that may be more receptive to brand messaging than a print or digital audience alone," noted Nieman Journalism Lab's Megan Garber of the advertising revenue potential for "Times in Cinema."

There are no ads on NYC life since it's a non-commercial channel, but Marzorati sees a different value in the collaboration. "We are always looking for new ways to get our content before people, and a partnership with NYC life provides that kind of opportunity," he said.

The concept was born last October when the Times approached NYC life about running some of its videos as interstitial programming. The station was already airing such clips from the Daily Beast and Time Out New York, but decided to take it a step further with the paper of record by proposing a half-hour arts and culture show for its Monday night roster, which focuses on those areas.

The Times didn't need any convincing: "NYTV" is cheap and easy to make. The Times supplies the videos, and NYC life handles limited post-production work and graphics, which, as you can see above, give a very visible nod to nytimes.com

"We thought it was an innovative way to package and make an interesting show where people could experience the Times in a different way on our channel," said Diane Petzke, general manager of NYC Media. "It enriches our programming slate."

The debut episode of "NYTV" features a yoga coach instructing his students on the seriousness of laughter; a visit A.O. Scott paid to the legendary actor Eli Wallach, who is also his great uncle; an actress struggling to drop her Queens accent; and a feature about "cargo-hauling tricycles" that's sure to make the Park Slope mommy set squeal. There are 26 episodes in all scheduled to air throughout the end of the year.