LISTEN: How ‘Dateline’ Became a Content Dynamo for NBC News

On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, “Dateline” executive producers Liz Cole and Paul Ryan detail how the venerable newsmagazine became a digital content dynamo for NBC News.

Cole, senior executive producer for “Dateline” and president of NBC News Studios, and Ryan, “Dateline” executive producer and a 14-year NBC News veteran, are at the helm of a the team that has made the brand more ubiquitous than ever across linear, digital, free streaming, broadcast, syndication, podcasts, social media and live media platforms.

“People come to us knowing that because we’re associated with NBC News, the stories that we tell are telling are true. They’re grounded in journalism, but we also tell them in a really interesting way and in a way that’s really guided by folks like [‘Dateline’ correspondents] Keith Morris and Josh Mankiewicz, Andrea Canning, Blayne Alexander, Dennis Murphy. We’re really happy that Lester [Holt] is working with us full time now. They just tell a story in a way that they hook you in the first minute, and they’re going to keep you all two hours, through 11 commercial breaks,” Cole says.

Those fundamentals have been applied as “Dateline” has expanded far and wide on digital, social, podcasts and live media.

“When we do an original podcast series, we are going to tell that story differently than we would when we’re doing it on NBC, where we have a fixed amount of time and commercial breaks that we need to hit,” Cole says. “Keith frankly loves this because it gives him so much more freedom to tell a story in a different way, describe things in a longer way and have a more slowed-down, lyrical pace to what he does. And if we’re telling something for digital, it might be much, much shorter and just geared towards that audience. And then we’re also really building that community of folks and moving them from platform to platform.”

The scale of the show’s footprint is astounding. In the second quarter of this year, the show commanded more than 92 million viewers across linear TV and syndication. With digital activity factored in, the show generated a little more than 28 billion minutes consumed for the quarter. Ryan emphasizes that “Dateline” is powered by a team of dedicated journalists, many of whom have long tenures with the show.

“We think our reporting makes us stand out from many of our competitors. They know they can trust us, and they also know very reliably we’re taking them on a journey to justice,” Ryan says. “And we’re very much victims advocates. We’re riding the story along with the people who are really in the throes of it and are experiencing it in real time. The other thing that’s a huge benefit to us and we’re very lucky to have is our staff. We have a staff of producers and editors who have been with the show quite a while.”

(Pictured top: “Dateline” correspondents Josh Mankiewicz, Blayne Alexander, anchor Lester Holt, Keith Morrison, Dannis Murphy and Andrea Canning)

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