Valley PR Blog

Meet Mike of Media Watch AZ

By Charlotte Risch on April 30th, 2008 In People

Press clippings and video/digital copies are very important to a PR plan. They help verify the hard work we do and clients love to see them and use them to enhance their marketing and website. I thought it would be interesting to learn a little more about the business and met up with Mike Shaldjian, National Sales Manager for Media Watch AZ.

Mike has been with most every dub biz in existence it seems. He started years ago with VMS, another choice and option for getting tv segments here in town. After some work there and on to Media Pulse and Bacons, he took a sabbatical and then teamed up with a friend who ran Media Watch in Tucson. In January of 2007 they opened up the Phoenix office and the partnership has been a great success according to Mike.

Media Watch AZ works with 210 markets around the country and were the first to offer digital service. They have 50 full service offices across the country and they all share a database so you can call your local office and ask for a dub of a client’s story that aired on the east coast that day if you want.

If your client is on the local Talk radio stations during drive time, you can also get a copy of the segment.  I had a challenging time getting dubs in the past, so it was nice to know that all I had to do was call Mike and give him the date and AM or PM drive-time my client ran in and he’d get a copy.  He said they only keep copies of radio for 40 days, so keep that in mind.  TV segments are always accessible (at least as far back as January ‘07 for Phoenix).

I asked what he thought of the other services in town because I always used VMS.  For me, VMS was pretty easy and reliable and their sales rep always called me after a client was on the air that day.  Mike gave kudos to VMS for their reports because they use a live person to monitor stories, versus Media Watch AZ that relies on closed captioning to find keywords.  

I was curious to know what other industries use video monitoring services.  I was fascinated to discover that Media Watch AZ gets a lot of business from local hospitals, media trainers and law firms.  Attorneys and private investigators survey news stories for crowd shots, aerial visuals and people on the street interviews that relate to cases they are working on.  Pretty interesting stuff, huh?

Mike estimated 50% of his biz comes from PR firms and the other 50% comprises legal, corporate communications and non-profits. 

I wanted to get some tips from Mike on how to make the most out of what they offered PR firms. He pointed out that Media Watch AZ has a new service that provides a preview of the story for subscription clients. They can click on a tab and see a little snippet of a story before deciding to purchase and then order it right there without picking up the phone. 

You can also get Nielsen and audience information at the top of each report, which makes things easier when estimating the value of the segment for a client.

Mike said its always smart to copy your clipping/video vendor on the latest event or release and dates of possible press coverage because no one is perfect and you don’t want them to miss an important story because they have keywords and info that have been the same for a year. 

If you’d like to learn more about Media Watch AZ, Mike is very open to email or meeting with you. I’ve ran into him at a lot of PRSA events, too. 

I’d love to get your two cents about your experiences or advice on how to make the most out of getting news stories copied for your clients. I didn’t discuss Cision, only because I don’t have the big bucks to afford their services, so any input you can expand on them would be great.

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