Webcasting: Where The Cablers Go Unscripted…For Better or Worse

By Chris Ariens 

Former CNBC and Headline News anchor Renay San Miguel has found life after TV news, and it includes writing about TV News. San Miguel writes an opinion piece for for TechNewsWrold about FNC’s and CNN’s attempts at live Webcasting. On FNC, The Strategy Room; on CNN, the AC360 Webcast. San Miguel writes:

Lest I give you the impression that “Strategy Room” is Roger Ailes’ take on “The View,” it’s not all females all the time. The hosts rotate among Fox News’ stable of anchors and correspondents, and sometimes after the pre-roll ad ends, there’s no real introduction from said host. It’s like being parachuted into the middle of a discussion…

As for CNN…

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Pencil in the “AC360” webcast as a work in progress. Correspondent Erica Hill (a former Headline News colleague) hosts a live stream broadcast at CNN.com during the commercial breaks in Cooper’s show. This gives her a chance to show off plenty of off-the-cuff personality and also sneak in more questions of in-studio guests…

> Update: Greta Van Susteren is keeping us honest (her words, not mine). From her GretaWire blog:

I just read an article on tvnewser.com about webcasting and OOPS they forgot GretaLiveWire!! (I just realized they also forgot Tammy Haddad who does live coverage of big political events on the web. She is the one of the best known webcasters in the business but they forgot her, too. OOPs. Click here.)

Well, Greta, the blog post was a pick-up of a story that reviewed just the FNC and CNN Webcasts. There are others out there too, including Katie Couric’s convention and post-debate Webcasts discussed in this Saturday New York Times story about Couric.

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