Thirty-seven percent of TV producers now use AI to identify stories to cover. For brands still pitching the old way, the window to catch up is closing fast.
A growing number of television news producers start the day the way most of us do now. Not by opening their inbox, but by opening an AI tool.
Before they read a single pitch, they’re already asking questions. What stories are trending? What experts are credible? What angles are audiences searching for right now? Within seconds, the AI surfaces answers pulled from recent coverage, past interviews, and digital content tied to those topics.
The AI revolution has come to the TV newsroom. It’s the latest shock to the system, already under siege. I’m sure you are familiar with the story after story of job cuts hitting the newsroom. You hear of giant mergers that threaten even more jobs. What you’re probably less familiar with is that local news content has increased dramatically during the recent 10-year period tracked by Pew. They noted a 30-40% increase in English-language local broadcasts and a doubling of Spanish-language local news.
The key takeaway, more work for fewer journalists.
It’s an unprecedented opportunity for the PR community. In fact, according to our “AI and the Newsroom” report, 94% of TV producers are now open to being pitched by PR people. That’s the highest it’s ever been. They need PR people and AI.
The data support it. We found 37% of TV producers now use AI to identify stories to cover. Doesn’t sound like much? It’s up from 0% in two years. If a producer knew a story they were pitched was optimized for AI search on Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, 68% would be more interested in covering it. They are using AI for research, fact-checking, writing digital stories, and even the graphics they are creating.
The pitches that align with what the AI has surfaced feel relevant, timely, and easy to execute. The rest, even when well written, often get ignored. Not because they are bad stories, but because they were built for a newsroom staff size and workflow that no longer exists.
The good news is that brands are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to figure out how they can be discovered in the AI Search/Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) economy. However, they may be missing out on a huge opportunity by failing to recognize how the newsroom has changed.
A television broadcast campaign is no longer just about the millions of people who might see it in the moment. Earned media has become the leading contributor to discoverability. When a brand appears in a broadcast segment, producers also create more content and feed it to multiple platforms. More than 90% of stations post their content on both their websites and social media. 86% are posting content to YouTube. According to MuckRack, YouTube content is now the leading driver of discovery for AI search across financial services, travel, entertainment, energy, technology, and healthcare on Google’s Gemini platform. Broadcast hits have become a force multiplier.
For years, we have operated under the assumption that if a story is strong enough, it will find its audience. In an AI-driven environment, the opposite is often true. If a story cannot be found in the way producers and platforms surface information, its quality becomes irrelevant.
Discoverability has become just as important as the story itself. That is a difficult adjustment because it forces us to rethink how we think about earned media. Brands that align their PR strategy with this reality now are effectively building a future-proof growth plan. Every piece of earned media strengthens its position. Every interview, every segment, every piece of content increases the likelihood that they will be discovered again.
Competitors who are slower to adapt are not just missing out on individual placements. They are falling behind in a system that compounds over time. Closing that gap is not a matter of running a better campaign next quarter. It can take years. That is why this moment matters.
The shift is not theoretical. It is already reflected in how newsrooms operate, how producers make decisions, and how audiences find information. Adapting to this reality does not require abandoning the fundamentals of PR; it requires reframing them. It starts with how stories are developed. The most effective campaigns now begin with understanding what people are searching for. That insight shapes the narrative, the spokesperson’s role, and the way the story is positioned.
It continues with a discussion of how content is created. Every interview is an opportunity to produce material that is not only compelling for an audience but also structured in a way that makes it discoverable. The language, the framing, and even the questions themselves all play a role.
And it extends to how success is measured. Reach still matters, but it is no longer the full picture. Visibility over time, frequency of appearance in relevant contexts, and the ability to be surfaced by AI systems are becoming more important.
The newsroom has not disappeared. It has transformed. Producers are still making decisions, stories still need to resonate, and they still need to compete for eyeballs, but the process that determines which stories rise to the top has fundamentally changed.
PR strategies need to catch up. Because in a newsroom where AI has become a first filter, the brands that are easiest to find are the ones that get covered. And the ones that understand that dynamic early are not just keeping pace. They are building an advantage that others will spend years trying to close.