“Alex Trebek’s wardrobe donated to help Americans in need”
“Louisiana sanitation workers help police find missing girl”
“Amanda Gorman recites powerful original poem at Super Bowl LV”
These are just a few of the “Uplift Stories” from CBS news. The TV networks use these uplifting stories at the end of their newscasts. The only goal is to make people feel good. The news, after all, tends to be bad news so they want to leave their audiences on an up note. Many producers have used this same strategy for corporate clients. What corporation would not want to be associated with a heart-warming story? Can you associate their name with the story? Could they “sponsor” the story? I’ve produced lots of little heart-warming stories like this for non-profits. In fact stories like these may make up the entire video of a non-profit. People helping people. These are fun stories to produce. And they are easy to do. Just ask a client of the non-profit how much Acme (non-profit) has helped them. The non-profit will gladly steer you to the people.
Feel Good TV Stories Outside The Networks
One man has made this a crusade on his “Not All News Is Bad” web site https://notallnewsisbad.com Leo A. Notenboom searches out and posts a single good news story every day. “My goal is to simply remind people that behind all the negative noise there’s still a lot of good stuff happening.” I searched, but could not find any advertisements or commercial angles on his site. Leo is a geek who spent 18 years coding and managing at Microsoft. In 2003 Leo started Ask Leo! is a web site offering free technical support resources for consumers. There are many other examples of sites and videos intended to help people or make them feel good.See The Virtue of Producing Pro Bono Videos.
“Good news” or Feel Good TV Stories have been around a long time. CBS News has long had their “On the Road” series, originally led by Charles Kuralt who launched the series in 1967. Thomas Steinbeck, the elder son of John Steinbeck believes the inspiration for “On the Road” was Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America. This is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck with the company of his standard poodle “Charley.”
Feel Good TV Stories will be with us for a long time to come because people need them.
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