This suddenly became a much better deal for the station sites.

There’s a big difference between a syndication deal (CNN gets PVs on IB stories, and vice versa) and linking to each other (IB gets PVs on IB stories thanks to increased referrals, and vice versa).

I would say IB is the big winner if it’s the latter. That’s a ton of new traffic coming in thanks to CNN’s reach, and they’re probably not losing much. Who was reading IB’s national news anyway?

But in many markets, CNN’s traffic exceeds that of the biggest TV site in town. It all hinges on the details of integration and traffic flow.

TV sites have to start cutting distribution deals, because we can’t live on islands. Forcing people to visit your site for your coverage — without being able to get it anywhere else — is not a sustainable solution in a world where competition for local eyeballs and dollars is intensifying like never before.

just to be real clear.

you are very much correct that every other site had the generic up there, but BOSTON customized theirs.

just to be clear.

I’m not sure if TheBostonChannel did anything specifically locally, but the headline changed across all the IBS sites after a few hours when the story was updated.

Actually, I suspect that you saw “TheBostonChannel teams with CNN” in much the same way that all the local IB sites saw a headline with their local site name. (you’ve gotta love technology)

Of course, if even an experienced news veteran like yourself was fooled into thinking it was localized, then someone must be doing their job.

the early release at other sites left the impression cnn was in charge; “cnn teaming with this web site” the blurb read while in boston it read something like “TheBostonChannel teams with CNN”.

reckon a few affiliates didn’t care for the second fiddle and since then the blurb has been changed; “cnn, ib to share news”.

yea, boston

With Pipeline to be officially free, all the content on MSNBC.com, it’ll be interesting to see if FoxNews.com beefs anythnig up. They already have some unique, original video segments and they stream their FOX News Talk radio network for free, but none of that stuff has the “bravada” as the other sites.

All in all, for the consumer, CNN made a smart move.

+ This doesn’t give CNN that big of a footprint. For instance, they only get one city in the top 10 markets.

+ What does IB get out of this? Well, capital for one. Who says no to money? But also: whoever said they don’t need the national content is right about news, but there’s always vertical areas to fill. Of course, the sites need to focus on local content, but for that network to grow revenue they need to push people into niche areas around the sites.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes….

If they’re going to let CNN handle the national side, that’s going to free up a lot of people to do something.

there are links to cnn that have been dead for years still sitting on the bottom of ib homepages everywhere.

maybe from 2000? rex might know.

and if cnn is going this route they’ll need to partner with a helluva lot more people to actually cover the country. not even all 70 ib channels are in this deal.

i wish them nothing but success with this, but safran has it right….

LOCAL. before a pure play does.

It sounds like they’re saying, “We never did national news that well anyway, so we might as well just let CNN provide it. We’ll focus on other things.”