Live, Local, On Stage?
Tonight at 5 pm, a different kind of production will take the stage at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium at the University of Texas in Austin. The venue, which in recent months has hosted a range of events, from Wynton Marsalis performing to a local edition of the eponymous TED conferences. But on this particular Wednesday in March, the auditorium stage will host the award-winning investigative team from the local Nexstar-owned NBC affiliate, KXAN.
We think every local television station in the nation should take notice of what they are doing.
The event is titled “KXAN Investigates LIVE: The Stories Behind Our Stories.” Scheduled for two hours, the first-of-its-kind event will feature members of KXAN’s Investigative team presenting some of their multi-platform investigative projects and interacting with the audience to give them a look inside how these stories were selected for coverage and then how they came together in the editorial process. The intention, as told to us by Josh Hinkle, KXAN’s Director of Investigations and Innovation, is that the station is “taking the newsroom out into the public and allowing the public to interact with us.”
We were intrigued by the idea as soon as we saw a graphic for it posted on Hinkle’s LinkedIn page. KXAN may have the perfect foundation for holding such an event. The station has one of the most productive investigative teams in the country, and its work has garnered multiple national awards over recent years, including seven national Murrow awards. Not to mention that Austin is a place that can turn out a crowd for this.
Hinkle told us that the station has several UT graduates on staff, and it has worked to develop a partnership with the University’s Moody College of Communication. The “KXAN Investigates LIVE” event has been in the works for several months and will be aimed at both students from the school and the general public. The station has aggressively promoted the event, which will, coincidentally, come just before the start of Austin’s annual South by Southwest festival.
The scheduled program will focus on three examples of KXAN’s recent investigative reporting as part of its “Catalyst Projects.” All of the stories have “true crime” themes at their core. From an examination of serial drownings titled “Beneath the Surface” to an in-depth look at how the state handles death inquests in “A Hanging on Backbone Creek,” the live event is smartly centered on the same kind of true crime storytelling that has fueled TV shows like “Dateline” and “20/20” as well as the most popular genre of podcast serials. (Click on those titles to watch the projects.)
Hinkle confirms that presenting these stories was an intentional choice, not only to help attract a larger audience, but also “to showcase the innovative and immersive reporting that KXAN has been working on.” He stated that the hope is “to get students really excited about journalism in today’s industry.” Adding that “these are not just TV news stories that you have seen for many years. They are projects that have digital docuseries including podcasts, immersive articles, and data interactives.”
KXAN isn’t alone in producing this kind of multi-platform, long-form storytelling. Recently, we’ve been impressed by the investigative and documentary work we have seen from other local stations. Two standouts in the space are Fox O&O KMSP in the Twin Cities, with its “Doc 9” series of documentaries, and Capitol Broadcasting’s WRAL in Raleigh, with its “WRAL Documentaries” series. (Again, those titles link to their online collections.)
As far as we are aware, the extension of the long-form franchise into a live “on stage” presentation is unique to KXAN.
But a television outlet producing a live audience event isn’t without precedent. MSNBC leaned into the space beginning in 2024 with a live event featuring its primetime hosts, including Rachel Maddow, Laurence O’Donnell, and others. Even as the network evolved into its present MS NOW branding last year, it produced another “This Is Who We Are” event that was successful enough that the newly spun-off Versant network says it will be tripling the number of these events going forward, under the banner of MS NOW Live, including a series from Host and Creative Director, Luke Russert.
It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to suggest that MS NOW may have been inspired to try its hand in the live event space by the success of its sister Versant network, Bravo. In 2019, the television home of the countless “Housewives of…”, “Vanderpump Rules” and Andy Cohen-hosted franchises held its first “BravoCon.” A three-day event modeled heavily on the iconic annual “Comic-Con” in San Diego (along with countless local and regional clones) that sells out to fans of comics, sci-fi, and Fantasy. “BravoCon” serves as both a money-making event with paid attendees and a content engine that generates programming for the network.
Tonight, in Austin, KXAN won’t charge anyone to attend, but it has used the online service Eventbrite to handle ticketing for the audience at the Hogg Memorial Auditorium. Early indications are that it won’t be an empty room. Josh Hinkle confirms that the event will be recorded on video and, hopefully, result in programming to air on the station’s KXAN+ streaming channel in the future.
Even if KXAN doesn’t make a dime from the production of “KXAN Investigates LIVE,” it will likely see a solid return on its investment in the on-stage event. Both connecting with an audience willing to attend in person and hosting journalism students who can interact with working professionals. It’s the kind of trust-building community outreach that every local television station should consider for the future, in some form or another.
If only because, as the fiction writer P.S. Baber put it, “The stage is a magic circle, where only the most real things happen.”
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