• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 13, 2008

NBC said Monday it will transform its local TV station Web sites into broader online communities offering news, information and entertainment as well as social media tools.

The "Locals Only" sites will each have a new look and feel and feature content from print and online publications, bloggers and NBC's local TV stations. The initiative starts rolling out this week with revamped sites for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

Philadelphia and Washington will follow on Oct. 20 and New York and Hartford on Oct. 27. Site URLs will also change to include city names as part of the overhaul. So, for example, wmaq.com becomes nbcchicago.com and wnbc.com becomes nbcnewyork.com.

"These sites are a departure from what we've done in the past and the next step in our mission to provide truly relevant local content to consumers on the media platform of their choice," said John Wallace, president of NBC Local Media, in a statement. He added that NBC wants to create online destinations for news, entertainment and cultural happenings rather than to simply serve as extensions of local TV stations.

In doing so, the network is targeting a group it calls "social capitalists"--young, well-educated influencers who "care significantly about local news and information and serve as fonts of information in the community," said Brian Buchwald, senior vice president of NBC Local Integrated Media.

That strategy of going after tech-savvy urban hipsters positions the sites more directly in competition with online city and cultural guides from CitySearch to Yelp to Flavorpill. By building that audience on its local sites, NBC also hopes to attract advertisers that want to reach them. "This is a way for advertisers to access locally based influential communities," said Buchwald.

Launching stand-alone community sites has become an increasingly common step among local media players, according to Gordon Borrell, CEO of local media research firm Borrell Associates. The McClatchy Company, for instance, recently debuted Miami.com as a separate entertainment-focused site apart from MiamiHerald.com.

"It's a fascinating and long-overdue movement to separate the "old media" brand from the "new media" brand," he said. "They're basically shedding the baggage of what the call letters or newspaper brand name means to the consumer, starting an entirely new brand name and product on the Web.

TV station sites have trailed other local media in tapping into local ad dollars. Stand-alone Internet companies such as Yahoo and Local.com account for 57.3% of local online ad dollars, followed by newspapers (24.6%), directories (7.8%) and TV stations (6.9%), according to a report from local media research firm Chicago-based Borrell Associates earlier this year.

But with local TV stations doubling their Internet-only sales forces in 2007, the firm expects their online ad sales to exceed $1 billion this year.

Buchwald said NBC expects the overhaul of its TV station sites, which have a combined audience of about 7 million, to drive significant traffic growth in 2009.