‘Nightly’ zips around the world

“NBC Nightly News,” like all the other networks, was in full-force swine flu coverage last night, but added an interesting storytelling technique to reporter Tom Costello’s package.

More details and another image after the jump.

To illustrate the effects the swine flu has had around the globe, an animated world map showed the location of an NBC correspondent while video of him or her popped up on screen while that reporter gave a brief summary of the events in that area of the world, including Lee Cowan at LAX, shown above.

Each standup included the reporter saying “I’m (name) at (location) where…” with the correspondent proceeding to give their account of events.

While certainly not a new technique, this was an effective choice to show the worldwide impact of such a story in a brief amount of time. From a branding perspective, it really emphasizes the global team that NBC has in place, giving viewers a glimpse at the worldwide network of news gathering used. While many of these correspondents may have contributed to a standard package on the story, it would be unlikely they would appear on air in such a situation, so this is a great alternative.

Local news has also used this type of setup successfully in the past, especially during severe weather coverage. Here again, it’s a great strategy to showcase team coverage and resources that reinforce the “we’re the one to turn to” mantra.

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