52 Comments Add your own

• 1. Ed  |  May 13th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

  Finally, a real use for the web. To track a tv station’s Chopper.
  There’s only one thing left - to pinpoint the tv station’s mega-ultra-doppler 2010.

• 2. Anonymous  |  May 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

  Now the terrorists have coordinates for their SAMs!

• 3. joe g.  |  May 13th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

  Considering the recent chopper tragedy in Phoenix and other chopper tragedies, it makes me a little uneasy. But not to totally be negative, it is cool technology. And simple technology at that.

• 4. Steve  |  May 13th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

  It needs the Activision ‘Chopper Command’ style interface.

• 5. Z  |  May 13th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

  Nifty. I wonder how it works.

  Steve: Heck with Chopper Command, set this baby up for the arcade version of Choplifter.

• 6. Jay_Jay  |  May 13th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

  Why not have news trucks GPS’d and tracked as well?

• 7. Joe Rosemeyer  |  May 13th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

  Sure, it’s cool, and it’s a natural extension … but is it doing anything to boost the bottom line? It’ll be interesting to see in a few months, after the newness factor has worn off, what kind of traffic this gets.

  I’m not dissing novelty content like this — we put effort into novelty content, too — but at what point do you take a hard look at whether or not it’s attracting more users and deeping their engagement? We assume so, but we’re in the business. What about Regular Joe? Does he really care? Will he check it out every morning to see if AirFoxLive is over his neighborhood?

• 8. Contrarian  |  May 13th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

  Exactly, Joe.

  It’s cool. Whee.

  Lors of effort is being expended on creating ‘cool’ content with no real thought as to whether your average view cares about it.

  This particular appilction will undoubtedly be used more by the competition than by actual viewers, who, for the most part, have no interest in watching where the helicopter is flying.

  Same with LiveNews Cameras. com. Really cool, if you work in TV news, but the everyday viewer isn’t going to come back more than once.

  When web designers stop creating apps for themselves instead of the viewers, then we’ll get someplace.

• 9. Safran  |  May 13th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

  Steve Baron is quickly establishing himself as one of the most innovative minds working on the local Web today. LiveNewsCameras is already one of the best new applications for local news. This is another example of what happens when a station turns its talented people loose.

  And yes, having lots of great and innovative ways to tell the news, present stories, and show your stuff adds to the bottom line. Absolutely. But even if a given example doesn’t, what’s terrific is that it’s inexpensive to produce and you simply let the Web decide if it’s worth continuing.

  I didn’t see this as “novelty” content at all. If anything, it’s a far better promotion for a station chopper than the absurd “ours is more chopper-er than yours” battles you see in any given market. People won’t check it out every morning. But on certain mornings when the chopper’s over an area or incident they care about? I’d bet on it.

  Find the people like Steve Baron and hire them. If you’ve got one already - let them have at it. Innovation requires experimentation.

• 10. Joe Rosemeyer  |  May 13th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

  “LiveNewsCameras is already one of the best new applications for local news.”

  Says who?

• 11. tdc  |  May 13th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

  i just checked in on LNC and found there were well over 15 LIVE STREAMING 10pm newscasts available to viewers anywhere in the world… is yours?

• 12. Safran  |  May 13th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

  Sorry, Joe. I will clarify: IMHO.

  Better?

• 13. Cory  |  May 13th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

  It doesn’t cost a penny after it was built. It’s nearly entirely automated. So why not? It’s free incremental pageviews. And the on-air piece is very cool.

  I’m a little surprised by the innovation backlash. It’s new, unique and cool. Why not? As an industry, we need to try more things.. faster. Most won’t work, but the faster we learn, the higher the chance we’ll succeed.

• 14. Joe Rosemeyer  |  May 13th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

  tdc: You can stream 100 newscasts, but if nobody’s watching…

  Cory: It’s not really a backlash — we’d like to do the same thing with our chopper. But, I also have to keep our bottom line in mind, and at least for now, focus attention on that stuff. I’m sure that makes sense.

• 15. Joe Rosemeyer  |  May 13th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

  tdc: You can stream 100 newscasts, but if nobody’s watching…

  Cory: It’s not really a backlash — we’d like to do the same thing with our chopper. But, I also have to keep our bottom line in mind, and at least for now, focus attention on that stuff. I’m sure that makes sense.

• 16. Rick Ellis  |  May 13th, 2008 at 11:37 pm

  Cory, it’s not that it’s a technology backlash. But my first thought when I saw it was that in thre months everyone will have forgotten about it, and it will be another link clogging up the home page.

  My experience has been that most sites suffer from too much clutter already. So if I’m going to recommend that they add anopther feature, it damn well better do more than adding “incremental” pageviews.

• 17. tdc  |  May 14th, 2008 at 3:20 am

  “if nobody’s watching”

  that’s funny in many ways…two of them are: if nobody is watching, then the cost to stream them would be nearly nothing (the most common excuse for NOT doing so), and if nobody is watching it’s because it ain’t there… they’re going over to the fox affiliate which does stream.

  i go back to cory’s closing sentence of this post and rest my case.

• 18. Contrarian  |  May 14th, 2008 at 4:06 am

  Cory, just because people disagree with you that something is “cool” doesn’ t make it backlash.

  Is it backlash when someone protests a (technology-driven) black-hole live shot?

  Having gimmicks like this on your site doesn’t improve your news coverage. The everyday viewer is not going to come to your website because you have stuff like this on it.

  They want to see the news, first, and accurate, in detail. That’s why they come to a news website.

  In a way, advocating gimmickry like this app is no better than doing live shots “because we can.’”

• 19. Rocker  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:30 am

  Who says local TV websites have to be “just news”? Is your TV station “just news”? Is that how viewers perceive it? Or the 80% of station employees who work in the newsroom?

  If you are “just news”, if there are 800 TV stations out there with that view of themselves, let me make a prediction: In 10 years, 75% of them will be out of business. The rest have a shot at being one of 2 or 3 local information hubs in each market (others will come from ranks of current newspapers and internet pure plays).

• 20. Contrarian  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:35 am

  Then we’d better work hard to be one of those 2 or 3–and spending time and resources developing apps that excite the developers, but aren’t of real interest or use to the viewers, won’t do that.

• 21. Alex  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:56 am

  “if nobody is watching, then the cost to stream them would be nearly nothing (the most common excuse for NOT doing so),”

  One question: How much is the moderator of the site getting paid to run it? That’s a real cost.

• 22. Z  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:59 am

  How amusing. I can’t even go to LiveNewsCameras.com now because the spam filter on the company’s network says: Blocked by content rule: Spam Email URLs

• 23. Ed  |  May 14th, 2008 at 7:14 am

  @Rocker: If you are “just news”, if there are 800 TV stations out there with that view of themselves, let me make a prediction: In 10 years, 75% of them will be out of business. The rest have a shot at being one of 2 or 3 local information hubs in each market (others will come from ranks of current newspapers and internet pure plays).

  “Just News” or not “Just News”, 75% of the local TV stations WILL be out of business in 10 years.

  So, do you want to spend that time NAILING local news, and have a chance at being one of the 25%, or do you want to make a helicopter tracker, and be one of the 75%?

• 24. tdc  |  May 14th, 2008 at 7:19 am

  it looks like a ton of them went out of business TODAY… no updates since around midnight last night.

  some you can’t even get to resolve.

• 25. JT  |  May 14th, 2008 at 7:42 am

  Checked this feature out this morning. It was spotty at best. Updates came after about two minutes of watching a static image. The live chopper feed never showed up.

• 26. Steve Baron  |  May 14th, 2008 at 7:54 am

  @JT - about this morning - the helicopter went up to check weather but visibility was too low to continue flying - they have been grounded due to weather pretty much all morning.

  You’ll notice above the video player it says “skyline camera when AirFox is not flying” so that is what you were seeing.

• 27. Cory  |  May 14th, 2008 at 8:34 am

  @ Rick, Joe, Contrarian: Perhaps “backlash” is too strong of a word, but when I see naysaying comments on a post that features something innovative, I feel compelled to defend it. We should be encouraging this kind of stuff.

  I for one, think it will drive decent traffic, not as a destination page, but as a linked page whenever there’s breaking news. And why couldn’t it be sponsored?

  As for whether it was a good investment of time (I don’t know how long it took to build) given its return, that’s an open question. But I think it’s too early to judge.

• 28. JT  |  May 14th, 2008 at 9:00 am

  @ Steve Baron - I figured such was the case. Obviously all these kind of things have their issues from time to time. We use WorldNow, so I know all about that. Keep up the good work. I’ll tune in another day to check it out.

  We’re working on the same kind of application, so I’m very interested in seeing how yours works.

  @ Naysayers - at least Steve is trying things. That’s where revenue-generating innovation begins. Try it. If it works, sell it. Too often its sold before its perfected anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.

• 29. Gorman  |  May 14th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

  Sure, it’s extremely niche, but if it even took him a whole day to pull together these resources, it looks like it’s a set-it-and-forget-it kind of feature.

  Not everything has to occupy homepage real estate every moment of every day. Put it there when relevant.

  I may use something like this 1 or 2 days out of the year, but once I know it’s there, I’ll look for that when a relevant situation arises. If it runs on auto-pilot (pardon the pun) then where’s the harm in having this?

• 30. tdc  |  May 14th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

  the more i thought about cory’s idea of having a sponsor…

  how about burger king?

  the whopper chopper.

• 31. GpsGate  |  May 14th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

  The tracking on Air Fox News is made using GpsGate.com Web Services. You can take a look at GpsGate’s home page if you want to try something similar.

  Regards,
  Johan Franson

• 32. Amanda E.  |  May 14th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

  Jeeze, whats with all the naysayers whenever a media outlet comes up with something creative and new.

  The media world is full of creative people who could do amazing things online, but with the constant bitching, dragging down and comments of “whats the point” “wheres the immediate revenue” “oh no the competition can see where we are/what our next story is” - its no wonder why CraigsList, Newsvine, et al are handing your asses to you.

  Ask yourself, would you have said the same thing about the Smoking Gun when it first came out? “Why put FOIA documents online, no one will look at them” “wheres the immediate money in it” “oh no, the station across the street can see what we are researching for our next story”. And they get what, two million page views a month now?

  It takes time to build both an audience and revenue. The online world of media is an amazing world, but if only you will embrace it instead of denying it’s power and using it instead as a storage space for re-purposed teleprompter scripts.

• 33. Safran  |  May 14th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

  Ditto all the things Amanda said - but here, we’ll end the revenue question now. As we’re reporting in our newsletter, Baron’s launching with a sponsor that is bringing in new, Web-only revenue. Click on my name for the link.

  I can’t imagine a life shooting down other people’s ideas. But, more to the point, I can’t imagine making a career of it.

• 34. Joe Rosemeyer  |  May 14th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

  Ha, good. Debate away. Only good things can come of it.

• 35. Contrarian  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

  “Jeeze, whats with all the naysayers whenever a media outlet comes up with something creative and new.”

  Creative and new is not, by itself, a good thing. It needs to be something that will drive viewers to the site, not just something that techies find cool.

  Your attitude is shared by too many web developers, whose digital masurbation, encouraged by the “sure, make something new, that’s great” crowd, are more interested in their own accomplishments than the news value of their latest exciting app.

• 36. tdc  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

  as for sponsorships:

  i saw sliders in one screenshot and cheap beer in another.

  not a bad start.

  i’ll take 6 of each.

• 37. Amanda E.  |  May 14th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

  @Contrarian

  The same can be said about color television vs black and white

  “Whats the news value in seeing this story in color, not everyone has color televisions”

  “Why waste time on something only engineers find cool and interesting”

• 38. Steve Baron  |  May 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

  @all the people wanting a bit more information

  Let’s throw out an example of an expected use.

  A large warehouse is on fire in Chicago.

  We post a link to a live video stream from the helicopter of a bunch of flames coming out of a building.

  The headline says “Live Video: Warehouse Fire in Chicago”.

  Users get pictures of flames, but not much else. That was before we got the tracking working.

  Now, with GPS tracking in place, we post a link to the AirFoxLive.com page.

  Now users have a frame of reference to place the video - they can look at the map and see where the fire is, what it’s close to, and maybe even how it could affect their commute, or something along those lines.

  The GPS map from the chopper is basically geotagging the story in real-time.

  Take that model and move it into a newscast.

  The chopper arrives on the scene of a big news story.

  What’s the first thing a producer does? They order a map!

  Well, now, since you’ve got this plugged into Google Earth, you’ve got a map already made.

  Its a second live source to go to while the rest of your assets (live trucks, phoners, etc) get into place.

  It’s all about giving the user/viewer more information to do with what they please.

• 39. Anonymous  |  May 15th, 2008 at 3:21 am

  I’ve seen plenty of televised fires and I assure you that we all know what a roof fire looks like. If you don’t have enough tall buildings in Chicago and the surrounding area, good luck and go ahead using all that pointless aviation fuel playing with a toy when other stations are interviewing the firefighters and the owner or workers.

  Make it work well. Chasing perps through Central LA for footage to sell to a TV show isn’t worth it.

• 40. Contrarian  |  May 15th, 2008 at 5:05 am

  @Amanda: No comparison. Do you honestly believe people will come to the website because they can see where the news helicopter is located? If so, ask some non-TV people and see if they actually do it.

  @Steve: It’s NOT about giving the veiwer more information. They don’t need more information about a warehouse fire. It’s really about using another gee-whiz, Doppler 60,000, super-amazing, look-what-we-can-do gimmick.

  Put the resources you’re using to create this crap into actual journalism instead of covering warehouse fires in the first place, and you’ll serve the viewer much better…if that’s what you really care about.

• 41. Rocker  |  May 15th, 2008 at 8:06 am

  Contrarian: Your disdain for this idea (and seemingly most other “cool” uses of technology) is coming across as a disdain for creativity in general. Maybe we can agree on this proposition instead: Any idea that doesn’t work should be shelved and you move on…as George Kliavkoff at NBC says, “our goal on the internet is to fail and fail fast” (while sticking with what works, obviously). I think the mistake you make is being a focus group of one…you don’t like it, so it’s a bad idea. I bet you thought studio cams were a bad idea too…”why would anyone want to watch that?” I don’t know, but the fact is they actually do. Moreover, your unbounded confidence in the traffic-drawing potential of a single-minded focus on hard news is also not supported by log file analysis. Doesn’t mean you don’t do it…means you seek to strike the right balance. In other words, please lighten up a little.

• 42. tdc  |  May 15th, 2008 at 8:25 am

  #41,

  tdc’s grandaddy always said: if a guy is intent on digging a hole, then offer him a new shovel.

  new shovel, contrarian?

• 43. Kirk Varner  |  May 15th, 2008 at 9:35 am

  Let’s see–everytime we put up an alert (either on-air or online) that our chopper is heading to a breaking news scene and you can watch it’s streaming live pictures, our web traffic increases. If they could see exactly where the chopper is, would they look at it? Let’s go with yes as the answer–until someone can prove otherwise.

  Why is this a “more resources being taken away from Journalism” contention? (Yes I spelled it with a big “J” on purpose.) Why do we have to feed that dead horse argument on why television news is dying and anyone over 30 just doesn’t know it yet?

  We don’t know why people go to one site over another with any more precision than why they choose one tv newscast over another. So why not try as many new things as “code heads” can come up with and see what’s “sticky”?

  Oh yes, that would be innovating and we just couldn’t have any of that, could we? After all, it was only a few minutes ago on the cosmic timeline when the experts were saying that this whole web thing wasn’t going to amount to much at all.

  As FSJ might say–Namaste, Steve Baron

• 44. Contrarian  |  May 15th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

  “Your disdain for this idea (and seemingly most other “cool” uses of technology) is coming across as a disdain for creativity in general. ”

  I apologize. I am in favor of creative, new ideas. My beef is with web designers who create stuff that impresses THEM but has little value to the viewer.

  Creativity is valuable, but its value lies in innovation that increases viewership, not ideas that make blogs like this one.

• 45. Contrarian  |  May 15th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

  Might I also point out to folks like Kirk Varner that it is axoimatic that the “simple” Google page is genius–because of its simplicity?

  Or, to bring it closer to home, The Smoking Gun gets millions of hits, but includes little more than text and some images…and a LOT of actual information.

• 46. Safran  |  May 15th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

  Might I also point out that folks like Kirk Varner, who post under their own name, are willing to innovate, try new things on their sites, and change their newsrooms to meet the challenges of their times.

  “A cynic is the man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
  — Oscar Wilde.

• 47. Contrarian  |  May 16th, 2008 at 5:56 am

  Glib, Saffan, but it doesn’t answer the point of my post.

  Guess that means you don’t have a real response, just a veiled insult.

  Got it.

• 48. Rocker  |  May 16th, 2008 at 7:37 am

  I’d like to post under my own name but it’s really not politically advisable. Is that somehow offensive? One thing I do is always post under the same pseudonym though.

• 49. long prong  |  May 16th, 2008 at 8:26 am

  me too.

• 50. Safran  |  May 16th, 2008 at 9:31 am

  @Contrarian The community and I responded to every one of your questions. You respond with insults and foul language.

  Will it make money? I wrote “The site is launching with sponsors.”

  Will it drive online traffic? Kirk Varner wrote that posting chopper vids online already does .”

  Is this just tech people showing off (to put your words into more polite context)? Steve Baron talked about one practical use for it - clearly a discussion that was had with editorial people, not just among techs.

  So, in fact, the community tried like heck to give you answers. You may disagree, and you may not like the answers, but there they are. It’s hard to keep a healthy debate going with someone who only wants to shoot down answers and keeps insulting you when you bring one to the table.

  And there was nothing “veiled” about the insulting language you used.

  A classical contrarian keeps a healthy, skeptical eye on conventional wisdom. When you just shout “no” all the time, you’re Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic.”

• 51. Contrarian  |  May 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

  Foul language?

• 52. Kirk Varner  |  May 17th, 2008 at 8:10 am

  As to the Contrarian point of view about this–I thought my point was as simple to understand as a Google home page. Its my experience in the real world that at least some people who would qualify as “the average viewer” already like to watch video from a helicopter online, so why would being able to see where its flying from this app be a bad thing?

  But exactly how did creating this take anything away from the rest of its home site? We should limit the creativity of web developers and designers because they might be taking something away from the “journalism” on a news site? (Note to self: remember that the folks on our team who can write Javascript and Perl must spend more time writing articles for our home page.)

  Maybe I missed it somewhere along the way, but I thought the whole point of Lost Remote was that this really still is the “brave new world” and nobody has figured it all out yet, so by sharing and talking about what’s new, what’s working and what’s being paid Billions for now, is what was five years ago something most companies were paying more in lip service to–than cold hard cash, it might just be a good thing. (Sorry, Martha.)

  You know, we might all get a little smarter in the process of figuring out “what the viewer wants” if rather than just believing our own knee-jerk reactions or having a deck of 100 Powerpoint slides with piecharts and graphs show us, that on occasion we took a few risks and embraced the “new and cool” if for no other reason that just because it was new and cool to somebody else. Because you never know when the somebody elses will count in the millions and you will have found “the next big thing”.

  And folks, let’s be clear–I, for one, have no issue with anyone posting under whatever name they wish. I’m just too opinionated and probably too lazy to use any name other than my own. Of course, YMMV.

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