Local TV News via YouTube

Posted January 17th, 2007 at 12:43 PM by IlliniPundit
in

A local TV news station is embracing technology and the great digital conversation occurring today.

Temecula, California’s KZSW Television could be the first local TV station to take its local news beyond the station’s 30,000 viewers and into the world wide audience of YouTube. The station’s local newspaper wrote tonight about the cable station’s new practice of posting select news segments on the video sharing site. Local news on YouTube - it was only a matter of time.

Station CEO Kevin Page says that making segments available on YouTube is easier and faster than burning DVDs of segments that viewers call to request copies of. It also allows viewers to subscribe and receive notices whenever a new segment is available. Page reportedly hopes to sell ads at the end of the segments in the future - we’ll see how that goes over.

Meanwhile, the News-Gazette is charging $2.95 for an online copy of a month-old article about a current local issue.

And WCIA, while they did me a great favor by doing a story about my involvement in this blog, couldn't send me a digital copy to share on the very website about which they were reporting.  (Luckily, someone sent me a Tivo-d copy, and I YouTube'd it.)

Which strategy seems best positioned to take advantage of changing news consumption habits?

(Hat tip: BuzzMachine)

 

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On January 17th, 2007 at 11:07 PM, CheapEngineer (not verified) said:

Local TV stations in a market of the size of Champaign/Springfield archive their stories on analog or digital video tape, or in larger markets on DVD in an uncompressed format. Stations of this size don’t have the time or manpower to dub out all the clips in a given days’s worth of newscasts.

 At every station I have worked, the news department makes every effort to help the subjects of their stories get a copy on tape, if possible. If someone does a story on you, it’s up to you to make sure you set your VCR to record it.

 As cool as it sounds written out in a blog, it’s not a conspiracy against you. It’s not a symptom of how the Liberal Media is not serving the public. About the only thing you can wring out of this little traumatic episode is the tendency for Big Media Corporations to squeeze the life and staff out of local television stations.

We now return you to your regular programming...

CheapEngineer
Somewhere in Kansas

On January 18th, 2007 at 01:06 AM, Ol' Guy (not verified) said:

Check out www.naplesnews.com. They pair with the newspaper the produce 2or 3 daily TV news broadcasts, aired on local cable access channels, plus free downloadable podcasts and vodcasts. Most of the news from the company is broken first on the Website and then followed up the the newspapers. The point being that not all newspapers are behind the times in technology. (Disclaimer: I work there...)

IlliniPundit's picture
On January 18th, 2007 at 09:11 AM, IlliniPundit said:

" As cool as it sounds written out in a blog, it’s not a conspiracy against you. It’s not a symptom of how the Liberal Media is not serving the public."

Oh, I don't think it's a conspiracy against me.  I use the anecdote to illustrate one way that local TV news could better use the internet to build their brand and spread their product with almost no additional overhead.

I just thought it was funny that they'd do a story about a blogger, but didn't have the capability of emailing a copy of the story to that same blogger.

On January 19th, 2007 at 01:24 AM, me (not verified) said:

i've never come across a more ass-backwards, inbred, slow-witted bunch. if they had any competetion (not likely given the free-fall newspapers find themselves in), they'd be toast. and how about those advertising rate increases? the only thing that's going up in price faster is ui tuition.