What local TV is doing to catch up online
Cory Bergman January 13th, 2008
Broadcasting and Cable’s Mike Malone wrote a solid cover story on how local TV is working to improve its online competitiveness, including examples from KTVZ, WMTV, WTTG, WJAR, KPIX, WMUR, WKRN, WNYW and KTBS. “TV has been its own worst enemy,” says Steve Safran, SVP at AR&D, about the industry’s tentative steps toward the web. “If it can change and play by web rules, there’s multiples more money to be made.” While most of the online moves are welcome, but still conservative by my book, NBC11.com has an interesting venture called NBC11Hometown.com. It’s a hyperlocal effort that allows users to post news in their neighborhood — dozens of them across the Bay Area — as well as restaurant and business reviews. While the platform is in place, my early assessment is NBC11.com is facing the same challenge as many hyperlocal sites across the country: getting a critical mass of submissions in each neighborhood to provide a compelling content experience. But, it’s still early, so stay tuned…
6 Comments Add your own
1. Tripp Fenderson | January 14th, 2008 at 5:02 am
I believe NBC11Hometown.com has been up and running since Jun 2007 and unfortunately, there is still very little depth in any area and little community participation.
Case in point, if you look at the restaurant guide for the Castro district in SFO, there are only three listings, one of which is a Starbucks. If you’ve visited SFO, you know how rich this area is and NBC11 fails to represent the community with their efforts.
I’d love to take a look at their analytics. I think you’d find that their visitor loyalty is pretty low since there’s little reason to come back to the site.
IMHO, the station went too broad with their efforts. They should have focused on one of two models to get their foot in the door:
1. Create a platform for community engagement in a single area of town and massage that model until they got it right before rolling it out to the entire Bay Area.
2. Serve as an aggregate all of the other great SFO community sites (a la Topix).
Sadly, they’re not the first media company to make this mistake and they won’t be the last. In fact, I’m working on a project now that’s about to make the very same mistake despite objections from numerous people.
In my experience, to be successful, this model requires both an intense dedication (time, money and staff) from a station and a dedicated group of community-minded people willing to spread the word about the site because of the benefits gained through participation. In my brief review of the NBC11Hometown site, I don’t see either of those.
2. tdc | January 14th, 2008 at 11:24 am
i like malone.
3. Amanda | January 14th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Many of your fellow media outlets blew it online in their reaching out to the community and a lot of people who would partipate in your sites are quite rightfully paranoid that your community sites are nothing more than a source of free imagery and stories for your station.
Change that percieved image, and maybe you’ll see a difference in the people who show up.
4. Barney Lerten | January 14th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
As the guy grateful to have been focused on in the lead of B&C’s story, I just want to state, for the record, that was no “media club” at John Adams High School in Portland, Oregon.
Under the tutelage of one of my main mentors, Chuck Heil, we did daily, 15-minute newscasts, with projection screen and the Sony PortaPak even (Chuck’s warning: ‘If it falls, fall under it’) back in 1971-72 - and for our first anniversary, had Portland TV’s anchors come in, read our news and critiqued our scripts.
Doubt many do that any more. Jefferson High got the cool color gear a year or two later, but what a great grounding I got as ‘editor in chief,’ rushing to deadline.
After 14 years at UPI, then The Bulletin in Bend and then 5 amazing years writing news just for the Web at Bend.com, going to TV was going full circle - and now, like many in smaller markets, I and my colleagues wear so many hats, we need taller doorways.
I was amazed when Michael, the writer, said one of the reasons for our big jump in PVs was a “cleaner” site. Whatever you want to call WorldNow’s templates, ‘clean,’ to this point, is NOT it. Hope to get back one day to what our great colleague, Karl Sanford, can create - truly clean Websites. And more stuff too;-)
5. Opie | January 16th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Ya know, TV doesn’t get it. I still see large TV stations doing “Live Webcasts” and encouraging people to tune into that. Uhm, isn’t the great thing about the web that it *isn’t* appointment TV?
I guess TV stations still need help.
6. Z | January 17th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Not always. There’s also a number of people at work who don’t have access to a TV. But whatever your Live Webcast is should also be available later, too.
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