My suggestion (which I’m sure they’ll discard) was to create a “Blue Moon” policy (as in, “once in a blue moon”) for high-interest, viral stories they may happen across.

The policy is really simple: “Blue Moon” stories get a different template on the website, featuring ads of more regional or national interest (hint: this is where you want to advertise your local tourist destinations, travel adverts, etc.). These stories get loaded to a different (load balanced) server to handle the crush of the social swarms.

If KTVB suddenly gets Farked, why shouldn’t visitors from Dallas see local ads from WFAA or DMN?

I’m a user.

I want the content they provide, to hell with the provider.

I’m certainly not there to look at banner ads or watch pre-roll commercials or anything like that.

“Oh, a story I think is interesting. I’ll check that out.”

(TIME PASSES)

“Okay, done. What else is entertaining on the Internets for me?”

It’s a selfish thing, web use. I’m in it for my own enjoyment, not to make sure some site is profitable or whatever.

Your market online is larger than what the ‘TV market’ and using DIgg, Fark, YouTube, MySpace, Newsvine, whatever to get your message out about your product and it brings you more people to your site, then you’re golden if you’ve got a way to make money off of it.

Maybe most people came to see the guy on the plane story and left. But perhaps a few stayed. Maybe they saw some things on your site they liked. Next big story you’ll see it again … huge influx of people but probably some will stay again which leads to incremental growth in community members

that is changing rapidly.

i would say the ultimate goal is to present LOCAL ads based on the locality of the USER. they are the boss, right?

we might be a few years away before this is perfected and the norm, but it’s what a few have been saying all along.

to think that the typical user only visits their own local tv/radio/newspaper’s web channel is selling yourself short.

the million dollar yet-to-be-answered question is WHO will make it so obvious where to go besides google.

like ‘anonymous’ #1 says, you need to quit thinking about traffic in local terms. AND MONETIZE IT.

another recent case where this happened was when the poor young girl lost both her feet to an amusement ride (see thelouisvillechannel stats).

something tells me ‘thenewguy(s)’ there see an opportunity. we’ll see.

and the beat goes on.

On the other hand, why look a gift horse in the mouth? This kind of traffic gives you a national exposure you would never get on your narrow broadcast channel. You’ve got people sampling your product that never would have otherwise. It seems to me that there needs to be a strategy for making the most out of this kind of traffic, from both an advertising standpoint and a content standpoint.

Have national ads served to anybody coming from one of those sites. Make sure these story pages have links to more salacious related content, from your site and from sister sites in your ownership group.