Things we were told about online that were wrong

By Steve Safran 

We make a lot of suggestions here at Lost Remote, and we get a lot of feedback. Most of that feedback is wonderful, additive and positive. Sometimes you tell us we’re nuts. (Sometimes we are.) But sometimes we hear all the reasons why good ideas can’t or won’t happen. So I thought I’d take a moment to go over the things we’ve suggested over the years that we were told would never happen – a sample of the suggestions we’ve made since 1999 that were met with resistance or outright hostility. These are things we heard from people at stations or on other sites who were flat-out wrong. This isn’t a exercise in “I Told You So.” I hope this will empower those of you fighting the good fight to realize there is an inevitabililty about convergence, no matter how loudly the naysayers say “nay.”

  • Nobody will break news on their site before the story airs
  • Newspapers won’t put much news online because it will cannibalize sales
  • Nobody will buy web advertising
  • Only young people use the web, and they don’t want news
  • The bubble has burst – there’s no future in the web now
  • There is no need to hire a web-only salesperson
  • News websites will never “blog” or have anything to do with blogging
  • Social networking tools don’t belong on news sites
  • Sites will never divide into niche vertical sites and get away from one news brand site
  • The site’s design has to match the on-air look
  • The networks will never send programming directly to the audience and ignore the locals
  • People won’t watch video online because the quality is not high enough
  • People won’t watch video on an iPod because the picture is not big enough
  • Viewers won’t upload video and pictures because it’s too hard to do

    As we continue to discuss new ideas here at LR (stations need to create original local programming, they need to invest more in their sites, etc.) keep these old ones in mind. Every time you suggest a new plan, there will be plenty of traditionalists that will tell you it won’t happen. And then it does. And then it becomes standard. (And then, of course, you don’t get credit for having come up with the idea 18 months earlier, but at least it happened.)

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