Featured, the AI co-pilot for public relations, has added U.S. local TV stations to its platform, giving PR teams a way to identify and pitch the stations covering a client's market while a breaking story is still moving. The new capability, Find TV Stations, runs inside the same Featured chat used for Newsjacking, so the research and the pitch stay in one place.
The workflow begins when a client configures Newsjacking with its beats and city markets. When a story card arrives, the user opens it in chat and asks for the stations in the client's market, for example Find TV stations in New York. From a station card, the user then drafts a pitch to the news desk that leads with the local angle and the person who can be on camera that day. Both Find TV Stations and Newsjacking are available on every Featured plan, including the free tier.
The addition matters because local news desks look for a local angle on national stories every day, and the data suggests most pitches miss that mark. Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026 survey found that 78% of journalists say a pitch is relevant when it directly affects the community their audience belongs to, yet only 16% say the pitches they receive usually reflect that community. That gap represents both a frustration for journalists and an opening for PR teams that can demonstrate local relevance quickly.
Local television remains where much of that audience is. The Pew Research Center reports that 65% of Americans get local news from local TV stations at least sometimes, and in the Reuters Institute's 2026 Digital News Report, 56% of U.S. respondents rated local TV news trustworthy, ahead of every national brand in the survey. Credibility and reach combine to make local stations an attractive target for clients seeking community-level coverage.
At the same time, local newsrooms are working with fewer people. The RTDNA/Newhouse survey published in September 2026 counted 26,458 full-time local TV news employees in 2025, down 2.2% in a year, with nearly two-thirds of stations relying on multimedia journalists who shoot, write and edit their own stories. Leaner staffs mean pitches that arrive with a ready local angle and a willing on-camera expert may be more welcome, and more likely to be used, than generic releases.
"Every national story has a local version, and the local news desk usually wants it the same day," said Brett Farmiloe, Founder and CEO of Featured. "Newsjacking finds the story and the angle. Now the stations in your client's market are one more question in the same chat."
The station database covers 1,757 U.S. TV stations and carries newsroom contacts for 470 of them across 195 TV markets, including news desk emails for 365 stations and news desk phone numbers for 332. It also holds 269 department desk addresses for weather, sports, consumer and investigative teams. Contacts were collected from station websites in September 2026. Users can search by state, TV market, city or call sign, and the platform shows which stations it can draft a pitch to. Find TV Stations is live now at Featured, free to start with no credit card required.
