Archive for April, 2008
ABC’s Thursday night lineup last week should have been a sure-fire winner: all-new episodes of Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy and Lost on the first night of the May sweep. But after a strike-induced hiatus for all three shows - Grey’s and Ugly hit series lows, according to TVWeek.
ABC isn’t alone. Both ER and My Name is Earl scored their lowest original episode ratings ever. The Office slipped 22% Scrubs was off 37% from last week, Fox’s Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader fell 16%. CBS’ CSI even hit its lowest non-Thanksgiving rating ever.
Fluke?
April 27th, 2008
When the town of Orting, WA lost its hometown weekly - several residents banded together to keep the information flowing online. The Orting Gazette turned off the presses in March - but now the new Orting News online site features community news submitted by the public, with a special emphasis on high school sports. The Gazette’s former editor is even pitching into help the new online effort.
Also: The Capital Times newspaper in Madison, WS, goes entirely online
April 27th, 2008
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. Total ad revenue, according to TVB, is on pace for a 3-5 percent decline in the second quarter. “We don’t think local markets will be able to support four or five local broadcast-TV stations, and we think some of the weaker ones may fail” in a few years, says researcher Gordon Borrell, who says the downturn could accelerate station’s efforts to find new online revenue streams.
I’m afraid the reports of layoffs will only accelerate in the months to come…
April 25th, 2008
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 am at Fox Chicago) are nominated as ‘Fox News Chicago’ rather than myFoxChicago.com. Our entry consisted of several URLs representing projects we have going here, including myFoxChicago, a local weather site, ObamaTracker, LiveNewsCameras, and our HS sports site.”
April 25th, 2008
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.
April 25th, 2008
Google is now offering four different display ad units for mobile devices.
April 24th, 2008
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 said before, local media’s online growth may soon come to a grinding halt unless TV stations and newspapers diversify into new, innovative online products in their local markets.
Related: Online classifieds, vertical ad spending boom predicted
April 24th, 2008
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 Mark Glaser on Mediashift. “There are a lot of people commenting on stuff and riffing on things and blogging, but actually reporters breaking stories on the Net — there are a lot fewer than I would expect.”
April 24th, 2008
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.
April 24th, 2008
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 be on local content, much of it supplied by the Sun-Sentinel editorial staff.”
April 24th, 2008
- 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
April 22nd, 2008
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.
April 22nd, 2008
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 address the needs of individual teachers and trainers and schools,” said founder Dave Schappell (he’s a former Amazon.com and JibJab employee who got the idea when he had trouble finding a motorcycle class.) And with $2.5 million in funding, it plans to expand to other cities soon. Smart idea, and yet another example of a web-forward local content site that’s not owned by a media company.
April 21st, 2008
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 News — owned by News Corp — powering the section? “We work with companies that are in family and out of family all the time,” said Lee Brenner, executive producer of political programming at MySpace.
April 21st, 2008
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.)
April 21st, 2008
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 clearly produced for home viewers, with the only interactive part being e-mail comments read by a secondary-talent (not even the main show talent).
The show started off with a good mission statement, it’s just too bad it wasn’t able to evolve into a new voice in a crowded market of also-run newscasts.
On a side note, today KSTP launched Twin Cities Live, a new daytime talk show. They have produced a nice website, but there isn’t a forced interactivity on-air. The show is a show, and the site is a site.
What do you all think? Is there a way to produce a live simulcast that can appeal to both audiences? In my experiences the viewers on both mediums are rarely the same, with the exception of sports. But if you’re trying to do daytime TV and daytime web, is there overlap?
April 21st, 2008
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 program that also rolls a prompter for him at the same time. Watch here.
April 21st, 2008
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 home page and take a look at the list of headlines:
See the little T-shirt logos next to a few of them? I’m clickin’ the DUI one.
And viola! There’s your headline shirt for $15 bucks, with $5 shipping. Sooo… is this a brilliant marketing strategy? Will it sell lots of T-shirts? Will it “soften” CNN.com’s image because most people will buy and wear the craziest CNN.com headlines? Do tell in comments…
April 21st, 2008
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