Roanoke.com ends TimesCast, do news webcasts work?

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.