Carlisle United owner Tom Piatak has signalled a shake-up to the club’s in-house media operations.
The Blues chairman says the club are set to hire a new media and marketing figurehead.
Piatak also says he has not been “enthralled” with the content produced on the club’s CUTV streaming channel in its first year of use, and wants to see improvements there.
The club supremo was speaking at an online fans question-and-answer forum for members of United’s supporters club London Branch on Thursday evening.
He said the recent in-house review of the club had highlighted some areas for improvement, with the Blues’ media operations among them.
“We are actively in the process of addressing a senior media/marketing representative right now,” Piatak said. “Actively, as in we’ve been involved with it for the last week and a half.
“There is a slight shift that we’ll see. The position is basically head of marketing and media.
“I view media as one of the channels, and it’s a very important channel, to stay connected to the supporters in every way, shape, or form. But people may not realise this – we have not had a marketing function in the club.
“And I think that’s absolutely critical to tie those two together because when you’re trying to get a message out or you’re trying to get news out there, that marketing piece really should be driving it with the media supporting it.
“It’s being addressed right now, and there will hopefully be some announcements coming out shortly.”
A sign of impending changes to United’s media set-up came when the club’s social media manager, Rob Elder, this week announced that he was being made redundant after just 14 months in his role.
At the London Branch forum, meanwhile, Piatak was asked about the rationale of placing so much club content behind the CUTV paywall, for a subscription cost of £4.99 per month.
Tom Piatak speaking at the London Branch online forum (Image: London Branch Zoom)
He said: “CUTV basically does help fund the club. Most of the information that’s on CUTV is time-gated and it does get released to the public.
“When I look at CUTV right now, I think there’s so much more we can be doing. There’s so much more that can be available to the supporters or to subscribers that is in-depth analysis, things behind what’s going on at the club.
“I have not been absolutely enthralled with the content on CUTV, and the club realises that, and that’s part of the chain on the head of marketing and media that’s coming in.
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“I think there is a balance. Some of it needs to be free and available as well. But the overall message I would say is the content on CUTV has to become much more robust, where you want to come home and view it, or you want to be able to log on and view it, and there’s sufficient material [of things] that you would not have seen, or would not know about how the club operates.
“It’s a revenue stream for the club, and that’s needed because long-term, the club needs to be financially sustainable. Our ultimate goal is to get the club to a point where it is financially sustainable on its own without owners’ equity. And I think we can get there, and that’s one aspect of it.
“But there needs to be more robust content on that to make it more valuable and to have supporters say, ‘I want to subscribe. I see the value that I’m getting. I see the in-depth interviews and different things that we’re not getting right now and we’ve never had in the past is now becoming available’.
“That ties into the marketing and the media changes that are going on right now as well.”
Another London Branch fan also asked about the club’s relationship with the local media, including the News & Star and BBC Radio Cumbria, with the supporter suggesting the club appeared to be controlling media/messaging more than before.
Piatak said: “With the News & Star and the BBC, there is a balance. Both channels are valuable. Both channels are necessary.
“I don’t have the knowledge of what it was like prior, [but] it is my understanding that very rarely would there ever be an owner sitting there talking to the press or talking to a supporters group on a regular basis as we try to make ourselves available.
“So, in terms of the transparency and availability of us [as an ownership group] and saying we want to be able to connect and talk to supporters and we talk to the press – yes, we’re trying to do that.
“I remember when I came in [the Piataks took the club over in November 2023], the relationship with the press and the club at that time was not a healthy relationship, and we’ve made a concerted effort to really try to open that up.
“It’s not perfect by any means. I definitely recognise that. But we are working with those channels, with the press to basically say, ‘How can we do this?’
“We need each other. I think the press needs Carlisle United and we need the press as well. So, it’s balancing that out. But we’re working on that and have active initiatives going on with them to address that.”
Piatak says he values the local media and there are active initiatives taking place (Image: Barbara Abbott)
The United owner added: “It’s hard to underestimate the value of the marketing function that the club did not have. To me, the media is a channel. It’s a channel to get that message out.
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“But the message has to come from the marketing group and the club as to what we’re doing, what our initiatives are, what we’re trying to hit.
“Sometimes it’s difficult when you just have a media department that maybe focuses on the football, because that’s what people want to hear, but they’re not getting [out] some of the broader messages that the club is trying to do.
“Because at the end of the day, yes, we want to move up and we want to get to League One and we want to be pushing for the Championship and that’s where we want to be in five years. But there’s an awful lot of other things that are going on around the club that are supporting that, that sometimes take a back seat.
“And I think nailing that, and getting the right individual for that position that understands how the marketing, the message and the channels come together, and we get that out in a healthy, good working relationship with the press and others is absolutely critical.
“So we’re very, very focused on finding the right person with the right skill set, with the right experience in both areas that can do that, because we think it’s absolutely required for this to work from a communications standpoint.”
