Newspapers and video: their role in news
Steve Safran August 14th, 2006
Broadcasting & Cable’s Allison Romano looks at newspapers’ increasing adoption of video online, and whether it poses any threat to traditional TV outlets. Allison kindly interviewed me for the piece. My opinion: adopting video does not threaten TV websites. If you want to win over your local market website war, have the best local information in town, period. The quality and depth of information will keep the folks coming back, not a platform here or there.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Cory | August 14th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Safran, it IS a competitive threat because newspapers now have the ability to go after local advertisers in a segment they couldn’t touch before. Video pre-roll ads had been a point of differentiation for TV sites in the battle for local clients.
Even from a content perspective, newspapers with video are a direct threat. The sites already have the biggest audiences, and adding video is one less reason for their loyal visitors to add TV sites to their daily mix.
Most papers are arming their photography staff (and some reporters, too) with video cameras, and over time, they’re going to start shooting stuff that we don’t have. And they won’t be shy promoting it when it happens. And how is that not a competitive threat?
2. Safran | August 14th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Point of clarification, Lord Seattle: What I meant was the act of adding video is not the competitive threat itself. It’s what they do with the story gathering, story telling, and their information that is the competitive threat. Video is an incremental addition. Adding lousy video does nothing, just as adding lousy text does nothing for a TV site.
3. Cory | August 14th, 2006 at 9:46 am
The act of adding video IS a competitive threat.
The competitive advantages of our strengths in video as broadcasters do not completely carry over to online video. Low production value stuff is accepted. It will not take newspapers very long to figure this out and start doing it well. Perhaps even better than us because we won’t get down off our broadcast-quality-video pedestal.
Plus, raw video is consistently more watched online than packaged video. Shooting raw video is not that difficult. You just have to be in the right place at the right time, and as newspapers give their large staffs cameras — conceivably more cameras than local TV — they’ll start getting better raw video than the TV sites.
And it doesn’t matter if it’s shitty video or not — if newspapers are able to leverage their large online audience into watching it, they can sell it. And steal our ad dollars.
This is a one-to-one competitive threat.
4. Steve Safran | August 14th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Point conceded.
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