Investment by Reach in video studios and staff has been described as a “game-changer” for its relationships with both audiences and advertisers.
The Mirror, Express, Star and regional publisher now has new state-of-the-art studios up-and-running in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham, with work ongoing in Liverpool and a revamped space in Newcastle.
The aim was to give each of Reach’s biggest newsrooms somewhere they can film content. Previously staff in London had to hire third-party space and sometimes equipment to produce podcasts or do film shoots. Alternatively they might film on Zoom or in the open office, or otherwise potentially avoid ambitious projects.
Last year Reach unveiled a 120-strong Studio team to make editorial and commercial audio and video content for its brands across the UK, helping to result in a 12% year on year growth in social video views in 2024 and revenue growth from direct social video buys and sponsored content deals.
Director of Reach Studio Mark Field told Press Gazette that adding audiovisual capability was “game-changing to us in terms of one, reputation to advertisers and two, opening up new audiences”.
Field said that setting up a central team 18 months ago made it easier to make the revenue case internally for further investment in video and audio.
June saw the launch of The Division Bell podcast presented by the political editors of the Mirror and the Express – a rare collaboration between the two titles on opposing sides of the political spectrum. Field said this “gave us the confidence” that the format worked ahead of making wider investment.
“Pre-Studio, when we had people that did video or social dotted around the country, it’s quite difficult for a PLC like us to go, well, what does that mean? How do we therefore make an investment model behind this?
“So that’s why putting it all together as a central unit that still connects into all of our newsrooms… from an investment proposition, it makes more sense.
“The amount of revenue that’s attached to all of it in the multitude different ways, from third party stuff from the platforms through to sponsorship opportunities, as well as the total audience and the total social scale: all of a sudden it’s a big thing and then gets taken seriously. So that’s enabled us to make the investment call on all of this lovely stuff.”
Similarly Reach chief digital publisher David Higgerson told Press Gazette: “This is really important for us, because… you know how seriously we take scale and reaching as many people as possible. We’ve done that very successfully for a number of years, regionally and nationally. The data bears that out. But the audience trend is very, very clear. People are spending more and more time with audio and video in lots of different forms.
“Lots of parts of our industry – the news media – have tried lots of different things, including ourselves several times over the years, but what we need to be able to create is the ability for our journalists to reach audiences the way that audiences want to consume content.”
Inside new Reach video studios at Box London
Press Gazette visited Box London at Reach’s Canary Wharf headquarters on Friday, four days after its official launch for staff.
Box London features two podcast studios and one film studio, each with all the modcons from lighting rigs, camera set-ups and acoustic paint, plus an editing room that can operate each studio remotely. The goal is to build up the team and its capacity so all three studios are often operating simultaneously.
Field sees the studios as being Youtube-first from a production perspective, with everything set up for Youtube long-form and vertical sizes. He also described using other social platforms “for marketing purposes to drive people back to the hero content” on Youtube.
The first podcast studio features a more formal set-up, ready for The Division Bell at the time of Press Gazette’s visit while the other was more intimate and relaxed, with a sofa and armchair. However both have a lot of flexibility around how they can be styled and laid out for different recordings.
The film studio is more traditional looking and is the place picture editors can now set up shoots much more easily. In the corner there is an additional vertical video set-up which can be used for quick social in-app filming.
Field said: “The thing that was difficult for us was we’d have to hire somewhere out, or we’d have to hire the kit, and all of a sudden just putting a little video together the costs don’t match up.
“But by investing in it centrally, and being able to put something together that everybody can use, and having them around the country, all of a sudden that that cost pressure goes out the window. It doesn’t for me, because obviously I’ve got to run it and turn it into some money, but it means that we can try things and we can do things, as well as plan proper stuff.”
The investment is in staff as well as the studio space. Field is currently hiring for four production roles in London – deputy head of video production, senior video editor, junior video editor and videographer – as well as three senior producer roles working on original content which he described as “a skill set that we need to invest in more.
“Because when you’ve got a journalistic background in terms of our business, what are the skill sets we need to invest in to enable us to do all this stuff? It’s not just the point and shoot people or the edit people. It’s the ‘how do we turn your idea into gold’ people?”
Field added: “It’s not like we’ve repurposed empty roles: this is additional investment in the team, which just shows that the business is really excited and believes that this is culturally a big part of our future as a business, especially if you want to engage with younger audiences or different audiences, or get people to touch our brand that may not have come in through the traditional routes, whether that’s digital or maybe through the paper.”
‘Everybody’s in Studio, really’
Despite investment in the Studio team, Field said staff from across Reach are being encouraged to get involved and pitch their ideas for video. After the launch party in Box London last week, he received an influx of ideas and questions. “Our job is to bottle that enthusiasm, have all the processes in place, enable people to come to us with ideas, help them with their ideas.”
He later added: “One of the mantras of the Studio as well is everybody’s in Studio, really, we’re just the ones in the middle that are helping enable all this stuff… we have really close meetings with all the senior editors to work with them on all the ideas that come in so we work out which is green lit, which can be turned around quickly, which is going to need a bit of development. And if we do that with all of our brands around the business, we’re just helping them think differently about getting those stories told in a different way.”
This enthusiasm was demonstrated unprompted by Mirror chief football writer John Cross, who bumped into Press Gazette on our studio visit. Expressing his keenness to do a weekly show, he said “I actually embrace and love doing” video and that it looks much more professional than when he was recording on Zoom.
Younger staff are also being encouraged to take part. Reach has a brand aimed at 16 to 34-year-olds called Curiously and Field brought them into the studio last week to discuss ideas. He said it was “more about inspiring them with the space, rather than us sort of straight away putting a camera in their hands”.
He added: “If we get that sort of response from one of our more seasoned journalists through to the young content makers that we’re bringing in, then I think these are those sort of cultural moments of quite significant change in the way that you operate as a business.”
Training can range from photographers getting support to get more involved in film, and learning that the studio is a “nerve centre” so they can always pick up the phone and ask questions, to journalists getting upskilled to create new types of content: for example Mirror head of showbiz Tom Bryant filming his own social videos in Australia for I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
Reach Studio will also carry out training for staff that might be interested in going in front of the camera as the publisher embraces more personality-led content styles.
Higgerson said Curiously has “provided us with an opportunity to bring a different style of content creation into the organisation.
“And I think that style of content creation, where the person is often a lot more front and centre, is very much audio and video first in their outlook, and is comfortable covering a range of topics, ranging from hard news through to features, through to showbiz, through to sports – that will proliferate across our business in the months ahead.”
‘We’re only in the foothills here and there is so much we can do’
Higgerson added that Reach has hired social video journalists across the UK to have people in its newsrooms “waving the flag for that and showing what that means practically”.
He said that often there is an industry narrative around “superficial statements” like the perfect length of a video. But Curiously “challenges us to ask ‘is what we’re doing the right way of doing it?’ Often the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is ‘but if we did it this way, it would be a little bit different'”.
Curiously has a primary focus on culture and entertainment and the personality-led principles of it can extend into sport and other areas in the coming months, he said. Reach has just launched a new digital brand with its own website called All Out Rugby League with similar brands set to follow in fighting and gaming.
Higgerson said it is harder to drive a scale audience to rugby across multiple Reach brands but that “by bringing them together in one place and having that real focus on the new podcast and through the work that Mark’s team are doing, we’ve been really encouraged by the page views there”.
Field noted there are a “multitude of revenue lines” available from “getting better quality” video, whether in the advertising revenue share from the platforms, programmatic or direct advertising from video on Reach’s own platforms, or branded content.
He said video and audio is now “front and centre of all the branded content solutions that we go out with”.
Tesco, one of Reach’s biggest advertisers, visited the new studios and immediately began asking about new things they could do, Field added. “When you get that sort of response from an advertiser, all of a sudden it’s a different conversation we were having even last week with them…
“A lot of the briefs we get from media agencies now are what’s the social bit? So we’re now able to put a very comprehensive production approach, as well as great ideas, as well as decent quality content, with decent amount of investment behind it.”
Overall Higgerson described it as a “really exciting time for us. We’re only in the foothills here and there’s so much we can do.”
He cited the principles that Reach follows – around creating journalism that people want to read, need to read and building relationships with them around that – and said these are now being helped by its social video output.
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