Jewish Life Television (JLTV)

Catering to a niche audience, JLTV uses earned media to build visibility and name recognition in communities of all faiths across the United States and Canada. However, without an efficient way to conduct strategic press outreach, the level of publicity efforts it needs to reach its growth targets would quickly become time-prohibitive. Without the right tools, lack of visibility would threaten the network’s ability to promote new programs as well as to pitch itself to new traditional and non-traditional video operators.

Looking to reach journalists covering the myriad of topics related to its programming, JLTV found Meltwater through a word-of-mouth recommendation from a national travel authority it had partnered with for an episode of its travel show Air Land & Sea. “They issued a press release that got a nice amount of ink. I asked, ‘How did you do that?’ And they said, ‘We use Meltwater,’” remembers JLTV On-Air Host and Executive Vice PresidentBrad Pomerance. Soon after, JLTV implemented Meltwater’s media relations solution to ramp up its media outreach activities efficiently and sustainably.

Meltwater Media Relations

When launching on new cable systems, JLTV relies on Meltwater media relations to get the word out in local media. For example, when the network came to the suburbs of Fargo, North Dakota, the Los Angeles-based team used both Meltwater’s traditional search and its AI-powered solution to quickly create a media list and distribute the relevant press release. 

On the flipside, when JLTV premieres a new program, it’s the media database’s international reach that the team looks to. So when it premiered the celebrity genealogy program Generations, it used Meltwater to distribute press releases internationally to journalists covering everything from entertainment to family history to Jewish faith.

Powered by AWS Compute architecture, the media relations solution scales instantly to meet the range of JLTV’s analytic needs, ensuring that it can handle increased demand without downtime. Additionally, AWS storage solutions provide a robust foundation for Meltwater solutions, ensuring data durability and availability. 

Whether sending out a press release to 10 media contacts or 2,500, JLTV leverages Meltwater to ensure each output is strategic. “My favorite feature is creating media lists through the search function and selecting all my categories,” Pomerance says. “I go to beats, then location, and then I decide my email type, create the lists, and send.” Afterward, built-in analytics gives the team an instant look at performance, guiding their next steps and highlighting new opportunities for follow up.

Results and Benefits

With Meltwater, JTLV has adopted a data-driven approach to its publicity activities, achieving an average press release open rate of about 43%. That above-average rate is reflected in its increased exposure both domestically and internationally.

Increased efficiency and improved targeting helped the network have one of its most successful program launches yet. “The success of the Generations press release was marked in that we were lucky if we got one or two hits before. On Generations, we got well over 10 national hits as well as local hits in a variety of thematic media,” Pomerance says. “There's no doubt that having Meltwater's database allowed us to reach a lot of different outlets that we wouldn't have known about.”

Looking forward, as the media landscape continues shifting, JLTV has Meltwater’s ever-evolving solutions  at hand to keep it future-proof, ensuring its mission to share and celebrate Jewish culture remains impactful for generations to come.