Comments on: What local TV is doing to catch up online

By: Z

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:30:29 +0000

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.

By: Opie

Opie — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:57:41 +0000

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.

By: Barney Lerten

Barney Lerten — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:21:49 +0000

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;-)

By: Amanda

Amanda — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:31:53 +0000

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.

By: tdc

tdc — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:24:25 +0000

i like malone.

By: Tripp Fenderson

Tripp Fenderson — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:02:00 +0000

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.