Archive for October 18th, 2007
TVByTheNumbers.com has a fascinating chart that shows historical TV viewing by year from 1952 through the 2006-2007 season according to Nielsen. The average time spent in front of the tube started at about 4 hours 30 minutes per day in the early 50s to about 8:20 in 2005-2006. For the first time in since 1996, viewing was flat from 2005-06 to 2006-07. With the fracturing media landscape smashing into more pieces every day - could this be the top of the peak of TV viewing?
October 18th, 2007
Two big websites launched today for Comedy Central hosts. One is run by Viacom to make money, while the other is run by a political campaign. The important thing to note? Both are awesome. I like politics, so let’s start with Stephen Colbert’s run for the White House. The “campaign” launched Colbert08.org so that those in South Carolina can download a petition and sign it so that he may appear on the ballot. To our loyal readers in South Carolina, you’re welcome for me helping you find out how you can save our nation.
In other news, I will no longer need to use YouTube since every episode of The Daily Show since 1999 is now online at thedailyshow.com. As we reported last month, Viacom is launching several stand alone sites for their shows. There will be over 13,000 videos on this site when it is fully loaded, and more being added after every show. What a great way for a company to monetize their history and provide on-demand entertainment for users. Also today came the announcement that Jon Stewart has signed a deal to stay on Comedy Central until 2010.
Busy day for Comedy Central, huh?
October 18th, 2007
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has big plans for the Wall Street Journal once he lands control of the paper in coming months. He wants to amp up non-financial news coverage, including national, international, arts and culture. A reporter asked if he wanted to kill the New York Times. As the headline alludes, he simply answered “that would be nice.”
October 18th, 2007
Newsweek.com has left the MSNBC.com nest, and is now going it alone. The new site is clean, easy-to-navigate and a much better fit for the newsmagazine content type than the more daily news-focused MSNBC framework. The magazine’s popular Conventional Wisdom Watch is now up front and above the fold, with arrows to switch between items. The content is smartly organized by theme, and video, photos and audio are given big play.
The Top Ten strip along the bottom of the site features the most popular items, and a simple slider allows you to change the metric from past 12 hours to past 7 days. Throughout the site, a “clip this” icon appears, allowing you to embed or link the material to a variety of platforms - including Google, Facebook, MySpace etc (image at right). A flash flipper lets you go back to covers for the past 2 years or so - and click to read the cover story.
Overall, the site is packed full of new ideas and widgets - and is now easily one of my favorite national news site designs.
Newsweek and MSNBC.com are still working together - but the ties aren’t nearly as obvious as they once were. If you enter the magazine’s site via a link off MSNBC.com, you’re given a blue MSNBC tab along the tab, but if you enter any other way, the MSNBC tab isn’t there.
October 18th, 2007
Amy Webb blogs this evening’s session on “blogging ethics” (there are ethics?) and it’s a topic that will raise some eyebrows. From Amy’s notes:
Very proud to announce that we’re developing a set of working blogging guidelines here at ONA that we’re hoping newsrooms will take and adapt for their own use.
Says someone from Bloomberg (I think - can’t hear): We’re all professional. We should never want to be accused of being not fair or not credible if we’re professional journalists. Why would we “spout uninformed opinion?” Journos shouldn’t blog. Employers shouldn’t necessarily allow blogging… It’s not “freedom of speech.” If you want total freedom, then don’t work for a large news organization.
Says me (Amy): Oddly, no one seems miffed by this statement. I think she’s missing the point here, and taking things to extreme levels.
Really? How did that get by without someone taking a swing? As it is, any discussion of a blogger code of ethics gets the ol’ one-two punch. But someone making a blanket statement like “journos shouldn’t blog” without being challenged by a room full of journalists?
October 18th, 2007
Google beat analysts’ expectations yet again with a 46 percent surge in quarterly profits.
October 18th, 2007
Roanoke.com’s excellent TimesCast webcast — a well-produced, daily, short-form newscast — has received much praise across the industry, including those of us here at Lost Remote. But they’ve decided to call it quits. Why? “We averaged between 200 and 400 page views per webcast,” online editor John Jackson said in an interview with Terry Heaton. Many TV stations are also coming to the same reality when they see the small audience numbers for their daily news webcasts (and I experienced the same with an experiment here in Seattle.) First, users go online in part because they want to select their own stories, not have them bundled for them. And second, such webcasts have a very short shelf life. But Roanoke.com isn’t bearish on all webcasts — they’re emphasizing niche video efforts that aren’t so expensive to produce yet tap into long tail effects. Smart move.
October 18th, 2007
Get a sample of what others are saying here at ONA… Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media Blog notes the description of his panel, “Becoming a Community Evangelist”: Learn how to harness the passion and creativity of your community to become a local sensation and a meaningful online gathering place. Dan takes issue with that:
With respect to the writer of that description, what hokum. The word “harness” is singularly inappropriate in this context. It reflects traditional media’s belief that the audience — the community — wants or needs to be treated like a herd of horses.
JD Lasica attended last night’s forum at the CBC news center, which was carried live on the CBC. Check out his recap of the event and this morning’s keynote by Yahoo! Executive VP, Global Partner Solutions Division, Hilary Schneider.
BlogTalkRadio is broadcasting live interviews from the conference.
And students are doing their own writeups at the ONA’s official site, journalists.org/2007conference.
October 18th, 2007
(KING5.com’s Dale Steinke is sending in quick reports from the Online News Association annual confab in Toronto.) About 300 people attended CBC.ca’s Future of News event last night, and one of the discussions centered around citizen journalism. Andrew Keen, who authors the book “The Cult of the Amateur,” said being a good citizen and being a good journalist are contradictory, saying he believes good journalists aren’t necessarily good citizens. Leonard Brody, CEO and founder of NowPublic, doesn’t like the term either. People can be eyes and ears, but not necessarily good reporters. “The news business is confronting a cultural storm,” Keen said. CJ, Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it, is a response to increasingly fragmented society. When the media rolls over to the audience and shows it your belly, “you get a good kicking.” Keen says the media should be more authoritative, not bow to audience.
Listen to clips from the session as well as add your own two cents here on CBC.ca.
October 18th, 2007
Channel3000.com has launched a new feature on their site called Scanner to aggregate the news from RSS feeds around the state of Wisconsin. Newspaper and TV sites are both included on the pages. WISC wasn’t afraid to include their competition, linking to WKOW’s stories as well. Apparently the other competitor in town wasn’t included, and actually called WISC to ask why they weren’t. Turned out their RSS feeds weren’t working, and they didn’t know. Anyway, nice to see a station try aggregating news from outside their market, and from across the street.
(Disclosure: WISN-TV is a Hearst-Argyle station, and is included in this aggregator.)
October 18th, 2007
The always lively Rob Curley of LoudonExtra.com (at washingtonpost.com) admits that “one of the things newspaper sites aren’t is playful.” At ONA Thursday afternoon, Curley got a laugh from the audience at the “Becoming a Community Evangelist” seminar when he asked “When was the last time you heard someone say ‘I went to washingtonpost.com last night and I was on there for 2 hours - I just lost myself.’” It’s true - there is fun content to be found on plenty of news sites, but newsrooms fear featuring it. You’ll find “odd” or “strange” stories on front pages sometimes, but it’s almost like it’s a dirty secret. The fear is that the audience won’t take a site seriously if it’s fun. Get over it. Rob’s right.
October 18th, 2007
Now liveblogging from ONA in Toronto… on the panel “Becoming a Community Evangelist,” Dan Gillmor hit the nail on the head with his observation of one of the biggest hurdles for newspapers (and, IMO, TV sites) today: “Newspapers are still unclear on the concept of sending people away. There is a parallel universe of information happening around you. The best portal you can create around that is something the audience/community will find incredibly valuable and they will keep coming back.”
October 18th, 2007
An astute commenter (tdc) noticed a relaunch we did yesterday, so I figured I might as well post about it. We relaunched thekansascitychannel.com as kmbc.com yesterday with a cleaner look. You can contrast that with another of our sites. While this was by no means a redesign, we did tweak the color palette, navigation, and content layout. The goal was to bring more content to our users, minimize the lengthy vertical navigation and make the reading of the site easier. I’d value your opinions on the look! (Disclosure: I’m sure it’s obvious from my post, but I did oversee this relaunch.)
October 18th, 2007
