Updated: When Lost Remote began 9 years ago this month, its slogan was, “The TV Revolution is Coming. Are You Ready?” We wrote about the early days of TiVo, praising the revolutionary potential of the device. We wrote about Craigslist before it expanded beyond San Francisco, advising TV stations to copy the idea. And, of course, we’ve been urging media companies to embrace online video for years.
We were the first site dedicated to how technology was changing TV, but times have changed. There are dozens, even hundreds of sites covering different niches: DVRs, HDTV, IPTV, VOD, just to name a few. And there are thousands of sites covering online media. The space has simply exploded.
So we decided it’s time to return to our roots: local TV and the battle for the web. After all, I started Lost Remote partly out of frustration that the corporate parent of the TV station where I worked was convinced that promotion, not content should dominate the home page of our website.
Today, there’s a new battle. Many TV stations understand the importance of the web, but the competition is fierce. Literally hundreds of technology companies are investing in new local online and mobile products that are designed to do one thing: capture local advertising dollars that were once invested in TV stations, newspapers and other traditional local media. As you’ve seen from reports from Borrell Associates, the news so far isn’t good: pure plays are dominating local media companies in share of local online ad dollars. And they continue to grow stronger.
So we’re dedicating Lost Remote to this battle over the local web. We’ll provide news, analysis, best practices and competitive intelligence on the race to capture local eyeballs and ad dollars, but from the perspective of local TV stations (and newspapers, too). And we’ll continue to cover national media sites when there may be some local interest.
It’s a broader approach to local — a redefinition of competitors that spans local search, city guides, yellow pages, classifieds, hyperlocal and more. Because for local TV stations, making the shift to local information companies may be a matter of long-term survival.
We’d love to hear from you below…
