Shakeout coming for local TV stations?
Lots of folks in the business are talking about this story in the Wall Street Journal today (sub. req.), “Political season can’t save local TV sales,” which details declining revenue at local TV stations. “Nonpolitical advertising at local stations is down in the mid-to-high single digits, by some estimates,” writes Sam Schechner in the Journal. [...]
EPpy Award finalists announced
The annual EPpy Award finalists for local TV/cable sites are MyFoxChicago.com, KING5.com (woo hoo!), wibw.com and WRAL.com. Finalists for the best news site (over 1 million uniques) are BBC News, CBCNews.ca, msnbc.com, NYTimes.com and Slate Magazine. And for network TV/cable sites: CBSNews.com, CNN.com, Discovery.com and ESPN.com. Good luck, everyone! Steve adds in comments: “We (I [...]
WNWO announces round of layoffs
The Toledo station, owned by Barrington Broadcasting, has laid off an undisclosed number of newsroom staff. “We’re facing a brave new world here, and models we’ve used for 40 or 50 years are no longer applicable,” said VP/GM Jon Skorburg.
Google rolls out mobile display ads
Google is now offering four different display ad units for mobile devices.
Scripps online newspaper revenue flat
Earlier this month, the Seattle Times said its online revenue dropped 6.5 percent year over year. And today Scripps announced its quarterly revenue, and revenue at its newspaper sites are flat compared to last year, at $10 million. (Scripps’ total interactive revenue was up 23 percent, but fueled by its non-media online properties.) As I’ve [...]
Not many sites like The Smoking Gun
The Smoking Gun started 11 years ago as a side project at the Village Voice by crime reporter William Bastone, and it’s still cranking away (although now owned by Time Warner.) “I realize it’s still the infancy of the Net, but it amazes me how few places are doing this sort of stuff,” Bastone tells [...]
Top newspapers by ‘time spent’
Only 11 of the top 30 newspaper sites saw an increase in Nielsen-Netrating’s “time spent” metric from March ’07 to March ’08. Full list here.
TV station, newspaper plan morning show
Last month, WSFL announced it would moving into the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s facility. And now the TV station says it plans to launch a morning show with the newspaper. “The goal is for the new show to be a fast-paced, personality-driven, nontraditional news and information format,” writes Tom Jicha in the Sun-Sentinel. “The emphasis will [...]
Briefs: Couric, eBay sues Craigslist, Murdoch
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric hit an all-time low last week. eBay is suing craigslist – saying Craig & Co. diluted eBay’s stake in the online classifieds site Rupert Murdoch is spending about half his time at the WSJ — and not everyone is happy about it
Speaking of media T-shirts…
AngryJournalist.com is now selling some pretty cool T-shirts. Gawker is holding an offensive headline writing contest for CNN.com’s new semi-hackable T-shirts. And the NBC Store is selling this little gem. (First two via Fimoculous and the third via Broadcasting & Cable.) Update: CNN.com has fixed the T-shirt hack.
Another smart local web startup
TeachStreet.com is a free online directory of 25,000 teachers, coaches and other educators in the Seattle area. Want to find a yoga class? There are 984 of ‘em. “We look at it as a little bit of a Yelp, a little bit of a Meetup and a little bit of a Craigslist, essentialy trying to [...]
NBC News, MSNBC.com team with MySpace
While ABC News has linked up with Facebook for election coverage, NBC News and MSNBC.com have teamed with News Corp’s MySpace on a Decision ’08 section. Check election data state-by-state, watch video and become a friend. You can also browse MySpace profiles for Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews and more. So why isn’t Fox [...]
Fun with CNN.com’s shirts
Did you see this one? Woo hoo! Drinks are on me… (While you can tweak the headlines, it won’t let you buy the shirt.)
‘KARE OnLIVE’ dead
We posted about this show about a year ago when it launched, but KARE OnLIVE is dead. The show promised to be interactive and live on-air and online, at 4PM. I never really understood how a TV show aimed at stay-at-home moms would attract an online audience at 4PM. I often saw segments that were [...]
Use your laptop as a prompter
Poynter’s Al Tompkins shot a bunch of video at NAB-RTNDA, and now he posts a clip explaining how he did it all. Al shot on a Flip cam, edited on his Mac Book and posted on YouTube. But he reveals the secret of his smooth standups: he shot ‘em with his laptop’s webcam using a [...]
Get your fave CNN.com headline on a T-shirt
People either love or hate CNN.com headlines. They’re short, witty and funny. Some say they’re sensational. In fact, there’s even a website dedicated to “a hilarious collection of CNN’s often ridiculous headlines.” Well, now CNN.com is letting you take some of your favorites and put ‘em on your own T-shirt. Yup, just go to CNN.com’s [...]
Sports leagues battle with news sites, bloggers
Many news organizations, like Hearst, Gannett and Sports Illustrated, have refused to adhere to Major League Baseball’s new photo and video restrictions. “From our perspective, any arbitrary restrictions on how we use our intellectual property for news coverage is not acceptable,†said Phil Bronstein, editor at large for Hearst. The MLB has agreed to change [...]
‘I am the future of NBC News’
NBC News has teamed with the New York Film Academy to promote a digital journalism and broadcasting program. Students will shoot, write and edit short and longer-form stories, as well as maintain a video blog. Beyond promotion, NBC provides some of the speakers as well, and the network gets a cut of the $35,366/student tuition. [...]
The power of embeddable video
In January, MSNBC.com became the first major news network to offer embeddable video players. In March, MSNBC.com says it set a video record: 125.7 million streams on 7 million unique users, which it says beats CNN.com. While MSNBC.com doesn’t split out the embedded numbers, it’s clear that embedding has paid off in spades. And a [...]
The CW pulls back on ‘Gossip Girl’ streaming
LostRemote has blogged before about how popular ‘Gossip Girl’ is online, buoying the audience of the show despite the low on-air ratings: …it’s wildly popular online, even outpacing The Office on iTunes. Fans sites are everywhere. And when you add DVR ratings to the mix, it’s the most-watched show by teenagers. So, the latest announcement [...]
