23 Comments Add your own

• 1. John Proffitt  |  February 1st, 2008 at 12:37 am

  To date, local TV web sites are largely promos for their TV channels. We all know that doesn’t work. Those stations that proceed to placing video online basically post clips from the newscast or even the whole newscast. Sometimes they throw in something “extra,” but not often, and it’s not terribly special.

  Local TV stations I know don’t really create any local content outside of the newscasts and perhaps a public affairs program. Certainly nothing creative, nothing truly original, nothing compelling. Their network fare is the compelling stuff. So even if they went video-heavy on their sites, what would you get? The only video that would make sense would be content from the networks. But why would the networks share such revenue with the stations?

  Local TV stations have to start being media and “connection” companies, bringing together geographically-bound communities in meaningful ways, in ways that the networks cannot and will not. But that kind of mission is pretty much counter to the purpose of these companies — they are profits engines, not true public service entities.

  Local stations need to stop being “stations,” and start being connectivity companies in their communities. That can be done on air to a degree, but it can really be done online and in person. One way or another they’ll have to do something to stay relevant.

• 2. Contrarian  |  February 1st, 2008 at 5:19 am

  Wow, that Stelter sure knows the business.

  How many other people’s blogs (certainly, this one!) did he read before coming up with this incredible bit of analysis?

• 3. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 7:12 am

  “…sure knows the business”

  that’s part of the problem… tv people who know the tv business think this is the tv business.

  first thing they might do is drop the ‘tude.

• 4. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 7:36 am

  btw-

  all you “tv people who know the business” should get the ap clip of ‘whiplash the cowboy monkey’ and run it on your 6p newscast.

  twiggy the waterskiing squirrel is so last year.

• 5. Contrarian  |  February 1st, 2008 at 7:38 am

  “first thing they might do is drop the ‘tude.”

  What are you, 16?

  There is nothing new in lil’ Brian’s commentary. Nothing. it’s all been said before in various blogs and elsewhere.

• 6. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 7:43 am

  yeah, 16… at heart.

  you got a problem with that?

• 7. Drew  |  February 1st, 2008 at 8:00 am

  Local stations have something that the national broadcasters don’t have…loyal viewers who will sit through 22 minutes of commercials to watch an episode of Lost or L&O. Go to the network’s website and see how tiny the adload is. Pathetic. If local stations could simulcast their network programming and syndies and local news and all the 30 second spots in between they might have a chance to transition their local audiences to their online websites. Right now they don’t have a compelling product for advertisers or viewers. Streaming random “used programming” from their websites will end up just sucking up bandwidth.

• 8. New  |  February 1st, 2008 at 8:09 am

  Contrarian– I don’t think it has been said in the New York Times though.

• 9. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 8:28 am

  little follow up on the “what are you, 16?” thing.

  “tv people who know the business” are very quick to wrap themselves in the flags of facebook, yahoo!, google and youtube. some go so far as to infer they have “partnerships” to demonstrate their hipness to an aging viewership.

  but when their ass is taken to the wall the first thing they reach for is their magic bag of perjoratives.

  must be that ‘tude thing.

  welcome to web2.0, mr. c.

• 10. Anony Mouse  |  February 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am

  Those “loyal viewers” have dwindled because with TiVos and new technology, they don’t have to sit through any commercials anymore. And TV sites are a mess of blinking tiles and repurposed prompter copy. The TVstationbrand.com web model with huge pictures of Kip and Kimmie Anchorhead doesn’t work anymore. In fact, it never did.

• 11. Contrarian  |  February 1st, 2008 at 9:42 am

  “but when their ass is taken to the wall the first thing they reach for is their magic bag of perjoratives.”

  But they can express themselves without sounding like they’re trying to pretend they’re young and one of the cool kids, as if that makes their point any more valid.

• 12. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 9:52 am

  WHAT-EVER!!!!

  (as tdc storms out of the chatroom headed for starbucks)

• 13. tkp  |  February 1st, 2008 at 11:24 am

  All good points. Well, except for the ones that weren’t. Yes all of this has been seen before on various blogs. Yes we all think we know what to do yet actually creating a business model from it is the difficult part.
  Here are the points I see that are hard:

  1) Where do you get the content?
  Local stations have been cutting staff for years so you either have to hire people or find it in the community.

  Hiring staff is pretty much a non-starter. If a local station is going to hire anyone it will be in the traditional news dept. True online revenue, not stuff that is leveraged with spot dollars, is less than 1% of total station revenue and you will find it hard for anyone to commit dollars to that tiny revenue stream.

  So that leaves the community. If you live in a top 30 market with a good college around you might be able to find some people who are willing to do some kind of rev-share deal to create content. Keeping it consistent is the hard part. It’s fun for the first few months but after that most people see there isn’t much money in it and it’s actually work so they get bored and stop.

  2) The second problem is educating the local advertising community that putting pure internet dollars to work will get results. Oh, and you have to do this without pillaging your traditional spot dollars. This must all come from their radio and newspaper budgets. Currently most stations sell it as a package that goes with a traditional spot buy. This means you either have to find new incentives for AE’s to go out and sell and educate or hire new media sales people that specialize in just that. How many small businesses do they need sell internet only buys to to be compensated like traditional AE’s? If they’re not making the same amount they’ll just want to become AE’s.

  After saying all that I still believe that this is the only way to go forward. I just argue a bit about how it gets done. Station websites have unlimited depth of coverage and inventory for advertisers. Now it’s a matter of getting people to come to local sites for their everyday needs. Original content, more in-depth coverage of news stories, business directories, hyperlocal news. All of these need to be incorporated to make the website the gateway to the community and a first thought destination not just for news.

• 14. Mel Taylor  |  February 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm

  true story:

  during a weekly meeting at a tv station where i worked, where the news director, marketing director, GM, web content manager, tv sales manager and myself (web sales mgr) were all together.

  i asked this simple question to the room: what is our website? a TV oriented site….a NEWS site…or a CITY based site ?

  silence.

  10 seconds later the ND spoke up. “we’re a NEWS site”

  i then asked the ND to consider: a typical program day is 18 hours long(6a-12mid), and NEWS takes up about approx 4 hours of that day (am show, 5p and 10p).

  so…if NEWS takes up about 25% of that program day…..
  why is our site considered a full blown NEWS site, with almost 90% news content ?

  especially when the only NEWS that is on the site, is re-purposed video clips from last night, and some really stale AP feeds.

  i then suggested: well, when there is no Breaking news on our site, can we use a really big entertainment or TV oriented story in the BIG VIDEO box on our home page ?

  NO WAY the ND shouted.

  i was then, no longer on her christmas card list.

• 15. George  |  February 1st, 2008 at 3:25 pm

  Why hasn’t any station (that I know of) put on a 24 hour local news channel, run partially live, but mostly automated when nothing is going on. Rerun stories, run expanded peices, opinion pieces, live bumper shots (automated) and live weather cut-ins. And of course commericals with clickable response. If a TV station provided more breaking local news on their website, I’d certainly leave a window open on the desktop.

• 16. George  |  February 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm

  In my previous post, I meant why hasn’t any station put on a 24 hours partial automated station STREAMING ON THE INTERNET. Sorry I left that part out.

• 17. Ed  |  February 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm

  George -

  Probably because streaming video on the internet is about an order of magnitude more expensive then on-demand downloaded video to serve.

• 18. tdc  |  February 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm

  that’s not enough of a reason for the washington post not to live stream 6 hours of coverage on tuesday, ed.

• 19. Don Day  |  February 1st, 2008 at 9:40 pm

  It’s been looked at, trust me… but it’s more complicated than even I thought…

• 20. Barney Lerten  |  February 2nd, 2008 at 2:24 am

  Oooh, dangerous reading this thread at 1am, but it’s so integral to my life, livelihood and passion I couldn’t stop.

  We just broke 1.5 mil page views for January, tops in the NPG group, and doubled page views with Weather Webcasts (NOT ripped from newscasts, but original, 4X a day.)

  Weather, school closures, how boring. (Reminds me of young reporters’ reactions to many of my old-fogey story ideas.) BUT… it sure brings the eyeballs. And I have to believe the dollars will follow, even here in lil ol DMA 192.

  Those who try to be contrarian and say it’s not all about content are just playing the “you don’t get it” card from the ’90s boom, before the 2000s bust. We plan to add communities/dialogue this year, because a news site without them is …sterile. It will boost page views and attention (and if we’re very careful, maybe reputation as well). I’m just not on the sales side, which with everyone else is trying to find a better, magic formula.

• 21. TR  |  February 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm

  Having been closely involved with local TV websites for most of the past 13 years, from the dawn of the Web, till quitting local TV two months ago to focus on our hyperlocal site, here’s my .01999999: Local sites should be focusing on local content. If you want to watch “Two and a Half Men,” you can google it and find it on its own damn site; just ’cause you’re the local affiliate doesn’t mean you need to junk your site up with it. If you have a news department, chances are that news department is staffed close to 24 hours per day but only producing 5, maybe 6 hours of on-air content. Feed the local content to the Web with continuous updates for every second you’re staffed. I look at local TV sites here for two things: breaking news (in which case a short alert high atop the page suffices) and unique local news video, whether it’s aerials of orcas in the bay, or cars sliding down an iced-over hill. Still waiting to see anyone in the local TV arena do something that only one local citywide site is even remotely attempting — frequent in-progress updates on developing stories. Not just the HUGE ones like a major storm, but also midlevel stories, almost with a liveblogging quality. Local police had a news conference the other day on a fairly high-profile murder arrest, and I couldn’t find anybody carrying it live on TV or webcasting it — not even the regional cable news channel — couldn’t even find someone with short text updates during the news conference — those on the story raised expectations by saying “police will have a news conference around 1:15 pm” but info from it was nowhere to be found till it was over (unless I’m just not looking in the right half-dozen places). Missed opportunity for infojunkie users/consumers like me, who not only will flock to your site but sing its praises to others. Oh yeah, my last .02, enable comments on everything you post. Don’t be scared, or huffy (”if it’s on our site, it’s perceived as our content”), as too many orgs still are.

• 22. Barney Lerten  |  February 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm

  Let me ask about the last part of your thought-provoking post, TR - any business wants to protect its reputation. How do you suggest doing so by enabling all comments, esp. if they are allowed without moderation, opening the door to the slanderous, the foul-mouthed looking to get off, etc. Simply saying “that’s the new era” doesn’t ease the heartburn or cool the jets of those calling incensed over hosting such crap.

• 23. TR  |  February 4th, 2008 at 1:58 am

  Barney, I know that firsthand - even with a hyperlocal site “only” getting 4K+ uniques a day, we get some heartburn over the effects of the comments. We have had some local businesses tell us they won’t advertise with us because somebody posted negative comments about their business (restaurant criticism, for example), among other effects. We do patrol for anything particularly outrageous and have removed/edited a comment here and there — while also maintaining a comment policy that says we won’t allow people to be insulted/criticized for traits with which they are born (race, gender, etc.), but other areas are mostly fair game, though we reserve the right to edit/delete any comment for any reason. Every organization has to decide where it draws the line. That said, I firmly, deeply, truly believe, perhaps to my own economic and maybe reputational detriment, that this is a time of transition when the bravest of us must weather the fire. The open, free, let-the-fur-fly Internet is here. Those who refuse to participate will eventually be swept aside. For every cringeworthy comment we get, we have at least 50 that enhance community, encourage discussion, often even advance the original story that’s the subject of the post/article above the comments - and I am willing to brave the one, to empower the 50.

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