Altanta TV station CW 69′s AutoScoop show airs Friday morning and Saturday afternoon on TV, and 24/7 on YouTube. Sort of. We see the show as an example of what media groups can offer auto dealers and other local industry companies as well as consumers, while marketing themselves and making some money. We don’t see it as the perfect case study, but we have suggestions to make it so.

John Pedevilla, local sales manager for CW69, told AIM Group that the show actually began seven years ago, on a sister radio station, moving to TV in 2007.

“We brainstormed how to service local dealers looking for better ways to sell cars – ways different from the then-60-second spot,” Pedevilla told us. “And, consumers needed answers to questions about buying and selling cars. People buy what makes them feel good. We felt that if we provided consumers with good thoughts of what to do they would come in to the auto dealerships more educated. Dealers love that.”

AutoScoop has local auto dealers as guests every week. Additionally, dealer associations, finance specialists, and manufacturer executives have appeared. The show has also traveled to Detroit and Washington, DC, to broadcast from the auto shows there. “We have a great relationship with MADA (Metro Atlanta Dealership Association),” said Pedevilla. “Dealers wait in line to get on the show. Two weeks ago we had Team Nissan and Toys for Tots on the program. Mazda has a relationship with the U.S. Marines for toy-giving, and our station is the exclusive toy drop off.”

AutoScoop is dealer agnostic, though Pedevilla is still choosy about who gets on the show. If he doesn’t know the dealer is reputable, he or she isn’t invited. Sometimes the show does a remote from the dealership; often it’s in the studio.

“[AutoScoop] absolutely works to our advertising advantage,” Pedevilla said. “ Because we’ve had it on for so long, we have great integrity. We only allow dealers to come on every 6-8 months. DOT [state department of transportation] was on, talking about what to do if in an accident. Attorneys come on and talk about accidents, doctors talk about rehabilitation, the Keep Georgia Safe initiative talks about things like children riding in back seats.

The audience is evenly split between male and female, and while he didn’t share audience numbers Pedevilla admitted it wasn’t massive. “However, people who watch it are 100 percent looking to buy a car,” he said. “And every week dealers who’ve been on the show say that they’ve had an outstanding week because of their presence on AutoScoop.”

Mark Ford, GM of Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta, has been on the AutoScoop show several times, including an on-the-floor interview from the 2009 Atlanta Auto Show. “We do a lot of TV – NPR, CNN, Fox News, and so forth,” he said.  He and owner Jim Ellis have also been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all part of the impression mix,” Ford told us. It all comes together to put us top of mind. We also do a lot of community services. According to Scarborough, Jim Ellis is the most recognized local dealership group. We were number 12 just five years ago.” The Ellis appearance on NPR was to discuss the GM bankruptcy and the Cash for Clunkers program.

Ford said that people walk in “all the time” to one of the twelve local Ellis dealerships and say, “I saw you on AutoScoop.”

“The public wants to know how to buy a car,” said Ford. “They trust those [AutoScoop] people. They don’t trust me, the car salesman, or the manufacturer, but they do trust the advocate. It’s that final warm and fuzzy push.”

Ford said that show host Adam Goldfein only includes reputable dealers on the show. “I wasn’t his biggest advertiser but he had me on a lot because he knew I’d be honest and that if [buyers] came here they’d be treated well.”

While we applaud the AutoScoop idea and suggest it to media groups as emulatable, we see some missed opportunities here. Its presence on YouTube is what Pedevilla basically described as if and when the station gets around to uploading the video there. We found several shows there, including two presentations by AutoTrader.com’s Lifestyle editor Keely Funkhouser discussing fraud in classified auto listings, and the ins and outs of writing effective auto ads. All shows should be on YouTube, almost immediately after they air on TV. They should also be prominently accessible from the station’s Web site.

There’s also missed advertising opportunity here. While the station has sold a pre-roll ad, there are many other video ad methods available that would allow for multiple advertisers on the online video portion of the show. Nor is the show marketed socially. While it’s good to keep it branded to the station, it could use its own landing page – www.autoscoop.com, for example – with consumer conversation around it. If you access that URL now you’re redirected to V-103, the sister radio station that used to carry the show. That makes no sense.

We suggest show reviews, contests, quizzes and polls.  It’s a good idea that would have a lot of appeal for auto dealers and industry vendors, but the innovation is in the online and even mobile accessiblity – not in the TV programming itself.

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