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Yahoo Buzz has been working with selective publishers… until today. Now you can submit your site to Buzz, which puts your stories and blog posts to a vote. The stories with the most votes — and highest search popularity — make it to the home page. More info here on how to submit your site.
Add comment August 19th, 2008
The MyFox team and the Tampa FOX station have been covering Tropical Storm Fay’s approach on a multimedia-heavy weather site at myfoxhurricane.com. The site has a ton of information, but I’m most impressed with the active live chat along the side. At the time I wrote this, nearly 2,000 people were chatting about the weather as the storm blew into Florida. Nice way to engage the users.
7 comments August 18th, 2008
There are some interesting takeaways from this column written by Topix CEO Chris Tolles. (Topix is a local news aggregator and community that’s focused on regions, cities and neighborhoods.) First, Tolles does some rough math:
There are about 1,400 daily newspapers and 7,000 television and radio stations in the U.S., and back-of-the-envelope math shows that they each produce about three to six stories per day, or about 22,000 local stories for the entire U.S.
If you ask me, he’s severely underestimating the number of local stories. Nevertheless, he says there’s a “vacuum” of local news. Which, if you look at it at a neighborhood level, you could argue he’s right.
“The internet’s solution to the dearth of local news coverage is the same as it has been with other problems of scale: let the people build it themselves…. In looking at sites like MetroBlogs, Gothamist publications, Outside.in, NowPublic, Baristanet and Topix (the site that I run), it becomes apparent that a massive amount of attention and investment has been paid to giving people a platform for engagement with the places they live.”
Tolles has a good point here, but I would interpret it differently: local media has an opportunity to leverage their online audiences to enable and aggregate more “crowd-powered” local content, especially at the neighborhood level. If you don’t, the national pure plays will beat you to it.
1 comment August 18th, 2008
Calling it “the worst value for anything we purchase,” the Publisher of The Post Register of Idaho Falls has sent a letter to the AP announcing the end of their relationship effective August 15, 2010, according to Editor and Publisher. (AP requires a 2 year notice before canceling service.) It’s a bold move, but Publisher Roger Plothow says, “[W]e’ll use that time to become essentially 100 percent local, which is probably where we’re headed eventually anyway.” The paper’s fees for 2009 would have been $114,000.
4 comments August 18th, 2008
The NBA is working on a plan that would allow Celtics fans in Boston, for example, to watch live streams of their team in action. Celtics fans outside of the Boston DMA would be blocked. “We hope to have a model in place this season,” said the NBA’s Bill Koenig. “We believe that if we can draw more people to the interactive features, it will help bring in new [fans] and keep [fans] for a longer period of time.” Of course, that doesn’t play well with cable and satellite operators, not to mention the regional sports networks. Stay tuned…
3 comments August 18th, 2008
Everyblock is rolling out the new markets fast. It just added Boston, Seattle and DC. A few weeks ago, it added Philadelphia and Charlotte.
Everyblock and founder Adrian Holovaty were just profiled in the Chicago Tribune. “I’m just amazed at how much the news industry does because other people are doing it,” Holovaty says. “There’s no sense of individuality or entrepreneurship.” True, wouldn’t you say?
1 comment August 18th, 2008
This can’t be good. Tribune (-4%), A.H. Belo (-11%), Lee Enterprises (-9%) and Scripps (-8%) all reported declines in online advertising revenue for the second quarter. “The decline in print has been so pervasive that it’s taking the online stuff with it,” said Benchmark Co. Media Analyst Ed Atorino. “This is the worst market we’ve seen.” Not all the newspapers are experiencing an online decline: the NAA says it still expects “double digit” growth over the next 12 months. By the way, as I’ve written before, I wouldn’t be surprised to see either flat or declining online revenue at some local TV sites over the next few months, thanks to the economy and a lack of revenue diversification.
3 comments August 18th, 2008
Howard Kurtz inks and chats in the Washington Post on how local papers and publishing chains are turning off the lights at their Washington bureaus as part cost-cutting and putting more attention on local content. The pull quote here is: “Sometimes the local story isn’t sitting right here in your Zip code or area code,” says David Shribman, a former Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe. Amen. While Kurtz is getting here today, some of us have been concerned about this for a while. Small and supplemental news services are getting cut to the bone as the bureaus have been shrinking for the past several years. We bang the local drum loudly now at Lost Remote, and the most important local story is how you and your community fit into your government. While there have been fewer eyes watching the federal city during this period, we are just starting to realize how much money has disappeared from the coffers. Pulling your Washington regionals to cover little league is not going to save the paper, folks, only hasten the demise.
9 comments August 18th, 2008
The Pew Research Center has released its annual news consumption survey. While TV still rules the roost for news, online is gaining steadily: 37% now get news online three or more days a week. Since 2006, daily online news use has increased by about a third, from 18 to 25%. Meanwhile, local TV news appears to be declining again after a period of stability.
The study divides news consumers into four groups: traditionalists (46%), integrators (23%), net newsers (13%) and the disengaged (14%). Traditionalists are offline, older (43% don’t work) and less educated. Integrators mix traditional news consumption with the web, and they’re heavy news consumers. Net newsers rely on the internet for their news, and they’re younger and well educated. And the disengaged are people who don’t keep up with the news. Some tidbits:
- The proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998.
- A slim majority of Americans (51%) now say they check in on the news from time to time during the day, rather than get the news at regular times. This marks the first time since the question was first asked in 2002 that most Americans consider themselves “news grazers.”
- Overall, 15% of Americans say they have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. More than a third of smart phone owners (37%) say they get news from these devices. (Watch how fast this number grows in the next couple years.)
- For local media, it’s worth noting that Pew is a national survey. So the more tech-savvy markets (and those without large retirement communities) will show greater online news adoption that the numbers listed above (and vice versa).
2 comments August 18th, 2008
With LR’s new focus, I wanted to lay out the landscape in “the battle for local” - and look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Local TV
In most markets, four to eight television stations compete for on-air revenue. They traditionally knew who their competitors were and focused on on big advertisers like car dealers and furniture stores. While their core business is still fairly healthy, dark clouds loom as the economy lags, viewership erodes and local ad dollars become increasingly competitive. Online, TV stations aren’t known for being very innovative. Stations are running their sites much like they did eight to ten years ago: text news, video, weather and traffic — a direct reflection of what they cover on the air but with a greater emphasis on around-the-clock breaking news.
Local Newspapers
Local newspapers used to subsidize their news gathering not with the ads that ran next to the news stories - but the small text ads in the back of the paper known as classifieds. Now that model is nearly dead, and newspapers are having to find new ways to fund the paper while trying to get agressive online. On the print side a vicious cycle is in place: fewer ads leads to less content — which leads to fewer ads and so on. Newspapers are becoming labs of online experimentation. They usually have much bigger staffs than TV stations and are willing to leverage the body count to try new things. Some of those efforts are working, but newspapers are far from finding the silver bullet on the online side, and as a consequence are rapidly shrinking.
Local Radio
Local radio continues to reach a large number of folks in a place few other media companies do: the car. Morning drive is still a cash cow for local radio folks. But satellite radio, iPods and in-car navigation (with built-in traffic reports) are beginning to threaten that dominance. With Wi-Fi and other Internet sources becoming more plentiful, IP-based devices could become common-place in cars, splitting open the number of choices in your vehicle. As a general rule, radio stations don’t do much online. Some info about its personalities, maybe an audio stream and a blog - but nothing to hang your hat (or ad dollars) on.
“GYM” Google/Yahoo/Microsoft et al
By rounding up lots of small advertisers with small niches, Google and its ilk are taking a huge portion of the local pie — mostly without local boots on the ground. Google does it without generating much of its own content, and offers automated tools to help advertisers mount a very effective ad campaign in a simple way. These companies spend great amounts on R&D and are always evolving and finding new ways to get their hand in the local pocket. Of course, it’s all fueled by search: increasingly the most popular way people research local products and services.
Craigslist and paid classifieds
The classified site takes its share of local revenue not by pocketing it, but through price desctruction. The minimally-staffed free classifieds sensation has decimated the newspaper industry, and only charges for ads in a few markets. As the site continues to grow larger and push into more markets, it will continue to put the squeeze on the print industry’s cash cow. Despite what you read, it isn’t all sunshine and roses. Craigslist is often in the news because its freewheeling ways breed illegal activities. Everything from prostitution to theft and more started from an ad on Craigslist, and some are starting to see it as a seedy part of the Internet. This could threaten dominance if someone comes in with a way to clean up the “junk” so to speak. Meanwhile, the battle continues among paid classifieds, with many newspapers teaming with Yahoo’s Hot Jobs and sites like Zillow making a real run at real estate from a unique angle.
Pure play locals
Small sites like the West Seattle Blog or big efforts like Everyblock hope to become the hub of local information and activity in ZIP code size ares or smaller. They threaten to do a better job covering areas than the local paper or TV station ever will, and could unite hyperlocal advertisers with users in the area. These sites give advertisers a choice beyond direct mail to target a small area, and could continue to draw ad dollars away at larger and larger rates. The sites often do this with no or small staffs, relying on the local community and public sources to provide content. There are also dozens of local niche sites, like Metblogs and Daily Candy, that also capture local eyeballs and ad dollars.
City guides
City guides like CitySearch have been around for a decade or so, but for the most part haven’t had a huge impact. This could change if the hyperlocal revolution we’ve been talking about comes to pass. If they aggressively aggregate into smaller and smaller (even neighborhood size) areas — and gain traction selling local video — they could begin to draw away traditional ad dollars. Yelp, meanwhile, is growing very quickly in reach and performs very well in many strategic search keywords.
Yellow pages and other directories
Everytime one of these stacks of paper-waste lands on my doorstep, I get annoyed. I lug the dumb thing to the recycle bin, and marvel at how strange it is that I get four or five a year. The Yellow Pages publishers have done a nice job of convincing advertisers that they must be in every book to reach the market. Of course, most folks now get their phone information online or on a mobile device. YP publishers are beginning to get aggressive online, capturing strategic search keywords and leveraging their large local sales forces to sell both print and web products. And directories like Local.com and Angie’s List are making progress, as well.
Alt weeklies and local magazines
Traditionally weak on the web, alternative weeklies are showing some signs of life in many markets, especially in the local music niche. The Stranger’s “Slog” in Seattle, for example, is the market’s most popular blog. Local magazines are beginning to realize their “best of” features extend naturally to the web as local online directories. While many magazines are rich in many advertising segments in print — such as travel and condos — they’re not converting those advertisers very well to the web (and may not want to, given the fact local magazines are less impacted by the internet than other print forms of media).
Outdoor
Billboards are undergoing a digital revolution of their own - but it has little to do with the Internet. Old paper signs are increasingly being replaced with giant TV screens that can be used to display multiple messages to the cars and pedestrians zooming below. The messages can be day-parted and place much more quickly, often at a smaller cost than buying the old paper style board. Plus, advertisers can change their message at a fraction of the cost. As long as people venture outside, billboards will likely to continue to be a force in the local advertising market.
30 comments August 17th, 2008
NBC’s “total audience” numbers for the Olympics (latest here in .pdf) give a little insight into the bad user experience (UX) that plagues cable VOD. It’s also interesting when applied to all the local content that’s appearing on VOD these days. So far, VOD is making up .1 percent or less of the unique universe of Olympics viewers, compared to 7-8 percent for the web, according to NBC. Of course, more people have access to the internet than cable VOD, but that shouldn’t account for such a dramatic difference. I, for one, didn’t know the Olympics were available on Comcast VOD until I saw the NBC press releases and started surfing around.
Ah, click “Top Picks” and “Beijing Olympics.” You’d think Comcast would at the very least make it a top-level menu item for the duration of the games. Nope. The same was true over on Charter VOD. “It should be the best VOD experience; instead it could medal in confusing,” writes Staci Kramer on PaidContent. As I’ve written before, the cable companies need to start producing VOD like the web or risk getting written out of the on-demand equation by experiences like Hulu.
Cable companies, especially Comcast, are aggressively ramping up their local VOD offerings. A quick perusal of Seattle’s local video includes local restaurant reviews, high school sports, pet adoptions, weekend events, auto classifieds, video dating… quite a selection. But so far the consumption levels are low for the same reason as the Olympics: people don’t know it exists in the first place. But it could become a competitive threat to local TV very quickly once cable companies fix the VOD user experience.
4 comments August 17th, 2008
Alright, so most Lost Remote readers agree that Michael Phelps is news, and the results should be posted above the fold, with no spoiler alerts, for all on the West Coast to see before it actually airs. But what about a breaking news email alert with the results in the title? That’s what the Seattle Times did Saturday night moments after the race, spoiling the results of Phelps’ final swim.
Update: CNN also sent out a breaking news alert, and it was automatically republished on Twitter (which for most people, comes across as a text alert), sparking a ruckus in Twitterland. It happened via cnnbrk, a Twitter user unaffiliated with CNN who automatically “tweets” CNN breaking news alerts as they happen. Some of the responses:
Thank you @cnnbrk for spoiling the olympics.
wow @cnnbrk i hate you… you just spoiled the olympics for me!
@cnnbrk hey jerks!!!! Don’t ruin it for me!!! UGH!!!!
Some jumped in to defend cnnbrk, but one Twitter user had this to say:
Why aren’t people pissed @NBC for not showing the games live out west?
For many connected Americans on the West Coast, it’s just about impossible NOT to hear about the outcome of the historic race before it aired. Unless, of course, you leave the TV on NBC, turn off your computer, hide your cell phone and wrap your house in aluminum foil, just in case.
15 comments August 16th, 2008
Last week, I sat on a panel put together by the very forward-thinking Idaho Press Club that looked at the Internet’s impact on local TV. I was joined by Mark Danielson, GM of KIFI and Vickie Holbrook of the Idaho Press Tribune. Danielson talked about his station’s WiNG efforts (which we previously profiled), and Holbrook talked about her paper’s rapid diversification.
The Idaho Press-Tribune is this state’s third largest paper, but is easily the most innovative. They produce more content than the much larger Idaho Statesman with a much smaller staff.
I told the audience that newspapers are almost dead (which elicited a knowing smile from the panel’s moderator - who also happens to be the editorial writer for a newspaper). But I warned that TV as a medium could be next. I write extensively here about the challenges facing newspapers, because our part of the industry could - and is already starting to - take a similar path. Hulu, P2P file sharing and centralized DVR technology could make it increasingly difficult for TV stations in the future. The entire panel talked about how the playing field has leveled out in ways no one thought just a decade ago. In many markets, the traditional newspaper and TV powers are battling on each other’s turf.
10 comments August 16th, 2008
Here’s the monthly Nielsen-Netratings list of the top news and information sites. For the second straight month, msnbc.com is in the top position followed by Yahoo News and CNN.com. ABCNews is 7th, Fox News is 9th, CBS News is 13th and WorldNow is 14th.
(Full disclosure: I work for msnbc.com)
8 comments August 16th, 2008
As you may know, the billionaire owner of the SF Examiner, Philip Anschutz, is pushing into local markets with Examiner.com — online newspapers that mix local aggregation with original columns and community features. Right now there are Examiner.com’s in 57 cities — see Seattle’s here — with plans to delve even deeper into larger neighborhoods. In your city, you may notice a local blogger or two that’s contributing content. Here’s the compensation model gleaned from a recent email from Examiner.com to a local blogger: Writers, called “Examiners,” are paid as independent contractors. The base rate is $2.50 per 1,000 pageviews, but there will be incentives/awards that may increase a writer’s pay. Payouts occur monthly if the total compensation is $50 or more.
Part of the pitch is the ability for bloggers to promote themselves on Examiner.com. “It’s free advertising for you and a guaranteed bump in your page views and readership,” explains the email. “This is going to be a big hit as we continue to grow. We want to give people a chance to be on board from the start and grab a share of our audience and find more readers.” Examiner.com says its pageviews have reached 6 million a month and growing.
1 comment August 16th, 2008
“(Backstory is) a quick way to catch up on how a story has developed over time,” explains CNN.com senior producer Rachel Clarke. “Now, when we want to give history, context and background to a developing story, we go back through our archives to find ‘milestone’ events and then link those together in an interactive window.” Take a look at Backstory in action right here.
1 comment August 16th, 2008
Twitter is getting more and more interesting when it comes to breaking news. Poynter has the story of a bomb threat at Daley Center in Chicago that made it from Twitter to the Tribune in a matter of minutes.
5 comments August 15th, 2008
Over the years, Gannett has built out 60 or so local niche sites dedicated to moms. And now the media company is pulling them together into a network called MomsLikeMe.com, which just launched this week. So for example, RockyMountainMoms.com now redirects to Denver.MomsLikeMe.com, and other sites, like CincyMoms.com, will soon follow. The effort will help streamline Gannett’s national advertising efforts, but the big upside here is MomsLikeMe.com has launched nationally, even in markets where it doesn’t own a newspaper or TV property. So for example, there’s New York, San Francisco and Seattle. All the big markets are represented, as well as most medium-sized markets as well. Very smart. Some media companies have attempted to launch a nationally-branded site by partnering with other media companies in its unrepresented markets, but the patchwork approach has shown little traction. Gannett’s national push all on its own is one of the most promising local online media efforts I’ve seen to date.
Of course, this niche is rather competitive, so Gannett will have plenty of work to do, especially in those new markets where it doesn’t own a media property.
Adds justme in comments: “The problem with this is that these sites are nothing but discussion forums. They don’t provide any content — events, stories about issues, links to recipes etc — that a better mom-oriented site like Whoa Momma from tampabay.com offers. Gannett may have more locations, but when you get there you don’t have much to see.”
Says dcdave in comments: “The tampabay.com approach is the old ‘umbrella/mothership’ thought process. Instead of giving the site it’s own URL and it’s own style, it’s simply an unwieldy subdomain of the larger site, designed exactly the same way as all of their other blogs without much attention to demographics other than the subject matter. The Gannett approach might be lacking substance, but that’s something they can make up for. The broader strategy of making the sites separate niche products, vs. sections on a hub site makes a lot more sense.”
10 comments August 15th, 2008
There was some discussion about possibly airing Michael Phelps’ final race live on both coasts, but NBC has decided to keep the tape delay.
5 comments August 15th, 2008
Although Disney emphasizes the report is “purely speculative,” an analyst who has followed Disney since 2000 says the company may be considering selling its 10 local ABC O&O stations, reports Bloomberg. David Miller, the analyst from Caris & Co., says the move would put Disney out of the distribution business for TV, and solely into the content business. Miller said his thinking is based on his own analysis, not from any reports inside the company. The price for the 10 stations would be as high as $4.8 billion.
3 comments August 15th, 2008
Cory posted earlier on the iPhone’s success an implications in the local marketplace. Resarch in Motion is firing back in the smartphone wars. The Blackberry 9000, called “The Bold,” is already for sale in some international markets and is expected to be in the U.S. market within a month. The Bold offers screen resolution that rivals the iPhone, but has a smaller screen to accommodate the keyboard. As the battle has waged so far, there is that feature-based consumer debate — touchscreen vs. real keys. But the covert war in corporate IT is where the Blackberry has gained all the ground. While the iPhone has the user experience, the Blackberry has the backend and security needed for big business. the 3G iPhone now offers Microsoft Exchange connectivity, and the RIM Bold is betting on a better screen to help improve user experience and help it hold onto the majority of the market. No matter what, mobile is the hot territory now and will be for a good while.
Also: T-Mobile to offer the first Google-powered phone
5 comments August 15th, 2008
While many big dailies are in trouble, the small suburban papers only lost 2.4 percent in ad revenue for the second quarter, compared to the 9.3 percent drop for newspapers overall. Not surprising given there are few (if any) competitors putting out the hyperlocal coverage these newspapers provide. But as Alley Insider explains, “(It’s) time for publishers of community papers to figure out local news on the web before someone else does.” Like neighborhood blogs, for example.
1 comment August 15th, 2008
TVB reports that local broadcast TV ad spending dropped 6.1 percent for the second quarter compared to last year. Network was down 4.8 percent for the quarter, and syndicated TV was up 9.1 percent.
1 comment August 15th, 2008
A lot has been written in the last few days about the “total audience” stats of NBCU’s coverage of the Olympics. TVbytheNumbers.com ran the numbers and looked at viewing time, not uniques:
“While I applaud NBC for rolling out its Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMi), it’s confusing some of the knuckleheads in the press who conclude from it that a greater percentage of people are watching online than actually are…. There are some who would conclude from those numbers that 92% of the viewing of events occurs on television. But when you see the minutes for the actual streams (which actually are very impressive numbers for the Internet) it’s more like 99.5% of the viewing of the Summer Games is coming from television.”
Actually, it’s 99.7%, according to Fox, which took the opportunity to put out a press release reinforcing the value of TV. “Bottom line? Broadcast rules,” Fox says. TV remains the big game in town, that’s for sure, but it’s worth noting that the Olympic Games (and other big sporting events) are certainly different than primetime shows, which are increasingly watched online.
6 comments August 15th, 2008
More than 10 episodes of new fall shows have been leaked on the web a month before they’ll premiere on TV. Explains Wired.com: “Welcome to the dawning age of the ‘pre-air’ season, where shows bubble up online several months before their debut on network television.”
1 comment August 14th, 2008
