From a text to the Today Show

Confession: I’ve been in the PR industry for eight years and my heart still races each time a journalist responds to my pitch. It’s nervous excitement thinking of getting that magazine cover, digital feature, and the holy grail, a national broadcast segment. And that anxious eagerness isn’t even tamed by the fact that prior to T&C, I spent 10 years in newsrooms as a TV news producer for stations in Montana and Alaska.

Our clients at Visit Anchorage just wrapped a one-hour broadcast sponsoring “3rd Hour of TODAY” on NBC. The broadcast taped at the top of Mount Alyeska in June 2025. It featured several segments like the “Buddy Up” where the anchors rode the Alaska Railroad’s Coastal Classic Train, fished in Ship Creek with The Bait Shack, and tasted special TODAY Show Toffee at Wild Scoops. All that came to fruition after a year of planning thanks to a couple of texts, patience in LA traffic and the thrill of the pitch.

Watch the “3rd Hour of TODAY Tours the Sights and Sweets of Anchorage.”

Back in April2024, we pitched a series of editor briefings on the East and West coasts as part of our media relations efforts for Visit Anchorage. We would travel to New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco to meet with editors, freelancers and producers of travel content.

I’d been on virtual editor briefings before (thanks COVID), and prepped clients for meetings with national travel media at the Alaska Travel Industry Association’s signature event Alaska Media Road Show (also coordinated by our agency), but I’d yet to travel with a client for meetings. Again, more nervous excitement. We pitched our regular freelancers and staffers at outlets like Travel Weekly, Travel Age West, Fodor’s and confirmed meetings.

In April 2024, I got even more excited when our National Media Strategist Meghan handed me off in a text to her and the agency’s longtime contact at TODAY. We texted back and forth a bit and made a plan to meet up in Los Angeles. No matter how many times I had checked the travel time and even building in buffer, we were 20 minutes late for our meeting at the NBC studio on the Universal lot. Thanks to LA traffic, the producer was also running a bit behind. (Phew!)

We chatted over coffee on the lot, and I let my clients share more about Anchorage as a destination. How it’s known for having 60 glaciers within 50 miles, its mix of city amenities and nature just a short drive away and more. I also had one Instagram Reel of a glacier experience pulled up on my phone to show off. Those glacier blues are irresistible!

The meeting ended as well as you could expect in those situations, positively with plans to chat further. About a week later, the producer connected us to the custom productions team at TODAY to discuss even more possibilities.

After several online meetings, emails back and forth and contracts, we moved forward selecting to focus on Anchorage’s summer solstice with the show planning to broadcast from Anchorage in June 2025.           

After a few weeks of virtual meetings in March and April, the first news crew came to tape a spot in May 2025. We had planned an itinerary for a story built around conservation. The correspondent would learn about how the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center works to rehabilitate and reintroduce Alaska animals across the state, how young Alaska Native athletes share their culture through Native games at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, plus how glaciers shape the city, from leisure activities to the drinking water.

Watch the full segment “TODAY Gets a Tour of Wildlife and Culture in Anchorage, Alaska.”

What is not in that story are the countless emails, texts, phone calls and favors that it took to get it on the air. That’s why at T&C we often say, “The best PR never sees the light of day.” We are like the ducks calmly gliding across a river, but what you don’t see are the feet rapidly and aggressively working behind the scenes to make everything look calm and run smoothly.

In the case of that shoot, it was a last-minute call to my coworker Connor – who changed his flight home to see his folks and instead ended up on the back of a jet ski in Prince William Sound. He would ride the jet ski to make sure that the film crew could easily gather footage from the chase boat. But from the look of his smile in his wet suit, I don’t think he was too bothered.

A few weeks later in June, the full crew descended on Anchorage and set up shop at Alyeska Resort on top of Mount Alyeska. The crew moved thousands of pounds of equipment up the aerial tram to set up the anchor desk overlooking Turnagain Arm, with ocean, glaciers and the rugged Chugach Mountains as the backdrop. The weather? Perfect!

A crowd of about 60 people came up to watch the taping, holding signs and cheering loudly. The broadcast was flawless. The client was thrilled, the chatter online was non-stop with everyone sharing the clips, commenting on social media posts, and businesses already seeing the boost from locals to their business in the days after the broadcast aired.

Now, onto the next pitch to chase that thrill once again.

— Ashleigh Carson, Vice President

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