A month ago I highlighted the new Tribune Company websites that were launching, starting with the Orlando Sentinel. Thursday night the company relaunched chicagotribune.com. The site is very similar to The Sentinel, although there seems to be less “stuff” on the Tribune’s site. The Sentinel appears to have more video, more entertainment features, and a Your Neighborhood section that I don’t see on the Tribune’s site. The top story on the site has video in the video section, but it’s not available on the story page. That’s one of the things I praised in my previous post. This site doesn’t have the TV-feel I described before. On the positive side, I have never seen a newspaper site with so many blogs. I counted 31. The blogs do enable comments, and reading them shows that users aren’t too happy that the historic Chicago Tribune logo has been replaced. Hopefully the paper will grow into this new site. I was really impressed with what I saw from Orlando, so perhaps the Tribune just needs more time to get it right.
Disclosure: I worked against the Chicago Tribune for 4 years while at cbs2chicago.com. I am a huge fan of the paper though. I respected them while I was there, and I still do.
NBC has launched a new site ahead of the big ‘08 campaign. Politalk.com is a forum-focused website that also includes news feeds from the NBC O&O stations around the country and msnbc.com. It doesn’t seem there is much activity on the site yet, but it has been linked to from the homepage of at least one O&O.
KNBC-TV in Los Angeles has created the new position of Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy and named Craig Robinson to the post. Robinson joins KNBC from Media General’s WCMH, the NBC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, where he was the General Manager. This news comes just days after KNBC launched their new local entertainment site, YourLATV.com
YouTube has come out with a feature that lets you customize your own player, and it’s a very cool advance. I created a quick playlist of videos from the New York City steampipe explosion and made the custom player below:
Check out how all the thumbnails popup when you mouse over the bottom of the screen. There are choices for colors and another skin that shows thumbnails to the right. They have built in other bits of functionality as well - so play with it and tell us what you think.
There’s a lot of acquisition money floating out there, and in this podcast, Cory and Steve mull over what Lost Remote would get on the open market in a buyout. (Consensus: Beer.) Also, we discuss the strange things readers obsess over at LR, the new hyperlocal sites popping up from traditional media companies, Steve’s recent “work” in Spain, and what he hopes to find in Aruba next week (more beer.)
CBS execs say that’s the goal — syndicate the network’s content to 400 sites by this fall. “CBS is all about open, nonexclusive partnerships,” CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith said. “Just CBS.com is not the answer.” The network has already partnered with 24 sites — and spent aggressively in paid search — and execs say the end result has been a huge surge in unique users from 21M to 134M a month.
Even the vast majority of House Republicans voted against Bush’s plan to eliminate the $420 million federal subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Scripps Networks, which owns the Food Network, bought the Seattle online recipe site Recipezaar for somewhere in the $25 million range. Recipezaar generates 30M monthly page views on 2.5 million uniques. Reports John Cook in the Seattle PI:
The sale of Recipezaar is a true entrepreneurial success story. Started in the Vashon Island home of the husband-and-wife team of Hakala and Gilmore, the company survived some lean years during the dot-com bust. Recipezaar never took outside capital and never spent any money on marketing, simply building through word of mouth a Web site that could help cooks exchange their favorite recipes.
Wow, good for them. I bet they’re eating well tonight.
First, I’d like to thank the members of the media I credentialed for my post-arraignment for coming. Thanks to precedents set by sports leagues and political events, news must now follow the guidelines set by all its subjects and that really takes the heat off the rest of us. So I appreciate it that all the local news organizations agreed to come here, share one camera, stay 100 yards away, ask only the questions sent in to your website and screened by my lawyers and then pre-answered in my emails. Freedom of the press goes both ways, y’all.
Hoooo boy. The National Press Photographer’s Association says the NFL just passed another one of its famous rules: independent press photogs will be required to wear vests adorned with Reebok and Canon logos. Oh… and the vests will be red. “I think it’s extremely unfortunate that the NFL, after limiting the number of local video photojournalists on the sidelines, is now attempting to turn them into roving billboards,” attorney and former photojournalist Mickey Osterreicher told the NPPA’s News Photographer Magazine.
The presence of corporate logos on game vests could be construed by some editors to be a violation of journalistic independence. As an example, many newspapers do not allow their employees to have political bumper stickers on their cars supporting candidates or political parties, or to donate to charities, or to participate in events that could be misunderstood or bring into question the organization’s neutral or independent stance.
Sports blog Deadspin reports ESPN sliced a bunch of material from host Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue at the ESPY awards. The show taped last Thursday, and aired Sunday - standard practice for this event - but it gives the network several days to edit and repackage. Most of the jokes the site says producers cut make fun of athletes — including this:
Michael Vick, as you’ve probably heard, is picking up where Bob Barker left off, to try to help control the pet population.
I think that’s great.
He’s also been doing some wonderful things for people in his local community - just this last weekend, he let the police have a treasure hunt in his backyard.
OK, so hearing “new version of onscreen TV guide” probably doesn’t scream “I must read this blog entry!” at you. But bear with me, because the pics at Zatz Not Funny of the upcoming version of the Verizon FiOS 2.0 version of their onscreen guide are something to see. The interface itself is gorgeous, but it’s what Verizon’s doing with it that is worth noting. With the permission of Dave Zatz, who got a behind-the-scenes tour, a couple of illustrations:
OK, this alone is a huge improvement over any TV interface I’ve seen. All of your choices are there on the left, and the opaque guide still lets you see what’s happening on the show. But here’s what’s really thinking different…
They’re playing around with widgets. Right now they have widgets for local weather, traffic and other local info. The show you’re watching continues to play as you pick your widget. Looks a little like a computer experience, no? Dave writes that Verizon will roll out this 2.0 interface in all its markets by September. Check out the Zatz report, where there are several more pictures including a very cool VOD interface.
If you ask mediabistro’s founder and cyberhostess Laurel Touby how she’s sleeping at night, her answer today may be “On a large pile of money.” Jupitermedia just laid down $20 million in cash and some change over the next couple of years to buy her out (NYT). The fabulous Ms. Touby will stay on board as Senior VP. Congratulations to a true Internet success story with a very happy ending and a promising new beginning.
YourLATV.com is a video-based entertainment site that focuses on local hot spots and events. Beyond the original video clips on the site (many of which air on the KNBC show “yourLA”), users can also upload video which may appear on the air. Coming soon, the site will feature video classifieds and more social networking tools.
After taking a brief look around, I think YourLATV.com is one of the most promising new sites launched by a local TV station. I love the idea that it’s a video city guide — a fresh angle to take on the CitySearches of the world. The design is snazzy and intuitive (except for the fact the video player is beneath the traditional fold on the home page), and the video segments are interesting and don’t appear to be ripped from TV. The one area it lacks is depth — a comprehensive events calendar, for example — but there are plenty of competitors on that front. This is the second major new site launch with a new brand for the NBC stations: DigPhilly.com debuted earlier this year.
“It’s now down to the Bancrofts,” reports the NY Times. After months of negotiations, Rupert Murdoch and company are down to the last hurdle after the Dow Jones board agreed to go ahead with a sale. Now the Bancroft family, which controls the company, will meet on Monday to make a final decision — which could take as long as a week.
At a conference dedicated to Internet TV, Google’s head of TV technology warned that broadcast TV is dying. Vincent Bureau then softened the attack. “On the surface, television as we know it looks dead. But the future of television is actually pretty bright,” said Bureau according to The Register. Google goes on to say that audience fragmentation is good, ad skipping is a “Godsend”, and new on-air talent should be culled from the Web. The last line of this tongue-in-cheek article is pretty funny:
“To sum up, the web’s biggest name thinks the web can help television. Go figure.”
If you get a chance, it’s a good read. If anyone can find a transcript of the actual speech, let us know in comments.
CBS execs say 
Hoooo boy. The National Press Photographer’s Association 
At a conference dedicated to Internet TV, Google’s head of TV technology warned that broadcast TV is dying. Vincent Bureau then softened the attack. “On the surface, television as we know it looks dead. But the future of television is actually pretty bright,” said Bureau according to 
