A comment left yesterday on Lost Remote has me thinking. “For all the hype newspaper sites get they actually don’t do all that well,” Jim wrote. “Many other TV sites do just as well as the big boys and never get recognized for it.” While newspapers still outpace TV sites on average, Jim is right about the increasing number of TV sites that are beating their newspaper competition. As newspapers face a tremendous challenge on Wall Street, they’re aggressively promoting their web ventures. You read about them all over the place. But on the TV side — especially in local TV — we hear very little about the success stories. So as a reminder, if your site has launched something cool (and it’s paying off in traffic and/or revenue), please drop me a note (cory at lostremote.com) and we’ll post it on Lost Remote. I think it’s important that TV sites are recognized for our successes, or we risk being out-hyped by newspaper sites — which are fighting for the same ad dollars.
Adds Don in comments: “I’ve been frustrated with the ‘newspapers are doing video!’ stories floating around lately. So? Many TV sites launched online video in the late 1990s…. TV stations have been doing breaking news for decades — most newspapers have been doing breaking news for months. We’re an innovative industry. It’s time to start acting like it.”
Adds Jason: “Just my $0.02, but I think the hype lies in that be cause of the limited nature of their medium, most people don’t expect that much from newspapers in terms of multiplatform/multiformat services applicable to a variety of digital devices. So when traditional print companies go all-out, it’s big news. Contrast this with TV sites, who many people automatically will assume will be relevant all over the board. It’s less of a shock when TV sites become all-encompassing.”
Adds Safran: “It’s not just that newspapers are ‘doing’ video. They’re going gangbusters with video classifieds. How did that happen? Why aren’t TV sites THE place for video classifieds? Newspapers are outselling local TV in video classifieds 3:1. I’m all for success stories, too – I’d like to hear about TV sites taking back innovation.”