Minneapolis newspaper building TV studio

The Star Tribune is installing a “stand-up” studio and editing suites with plans to launch StribTV. “We are starting with information shows around content that we already own to a large degree: sports, local entertainment, lifestyle and news/public affairs (politics),” writes Editor Nancy Barnes in a memo to staff. “We plan to add a daily newscast, available on demand, and may expand into weather.” Beyond a few big dailies like the Washington Post, this sounds like the most aggressive original video effort yet for a newspaper. But newspaper-on-video hasn’t always been a success, especially in linear newscast form. You may remember, Roanoke.com’s TimesCast was only getting a few hundred views a day, so the newspaper site discontinued it last year. The key, as we’ve written before, is to produce on-demand video that’s tailored to the web in underserved niches. We’ll see if StribTV can pull it off.