WRAL-TV and FOX 50 hosted a phone bank staffed by trained domestic violence volunteers on Thursday, September 18, 2014.
It started thirteen days ago with a late afternoon meeting to talk about what sister stations WRAL and WRAZ (FOX 50) could do about domestic violence. Twelve hours later, it was a company-wide, multi-media effort that would start a community conversation about help and hope. The company launched “eNOughNC” with a 60-second PSA and a 90-second PSA that aired in the premiere of Thursday Night Football on CBS last Thursday night. It followed with a week of news stories and culminated last night in a live three and half hour phone bank staffed by trained domestic violence volunteers.
“Our company has been working on the domestic violence issue for years. When the Ray Rice incident galvanized the country, we knew now was the time to reinforce the resources that are available to help our community,” says WRAL-TV Vice President and General Manager Steven D. Hammel.
The company-wide effort included CBC’s Raleigh television stations WRAL and WRAZ, WILM-TV in Wilmington, NC, sports radio stations 99.9TheFan and 620AMTheBuzz, plus the company’s TripleA minor league baseball team, the Durham Bulls.
WRAL-TV and FOX 50 hosted a phone bank staffed by trained domestic violence volunteers on Thursday, September 18, 2014.
The eNOughNC phone bank volunteers answered more than 300 calls in three and a half hours. Phone calls came from people all across North Carolina, plus South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Maryland, and Missouri.
Volunteers from the Raleigh Police Department, InterAct, and the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence worked alongside retired Superior Court Judge Susan Taylor, John Guard from the Pitt County Sherriff’s Department and Stephanie Satkowiak from the Administrative Office of the Courts.
WRAL.com hosted a live online chat with domestic violence volunteers as an anonymous way to get help. The chat had 430 interactions and more than 20,000 minutes of engagement. The special eNOughNC page that includes the chat archive and a lengthy FAQ currently has 1,000 page views.
Social media was a huge player in taking a local conversation to a national audience. The hashtag #eNOughNC has generated nearly 10 million potential impressions, reaching nearly a million people. Participation has come from as far away as Texas, Washington, California, Nebraska, DC, and Maryland.
The company’s eNOughNC domestic violence effort was actually born in 2013. WRAZ Account Executive Elizabeth Kline created a task force to bring together local agencies working on the issue. The agencies in the eNOughNC task force collaborated with Capitol Broadcasting Company to create enoughnc.org, a statewide resource to connect victims of domestic violence to service providers across North Carolina. In June 2014, an eNOughNC public service campaign launched with the help of a grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission. The North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence acted as the conduit for the grant.
Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Debbie Tullos for this capcom story & for these capcom photos.
