ABC News Breaks the Webcast Mold, But Will Many People Care?
There are tons of stories floating through cyberspace about how television network news is dead. While the ratings for network television news have declined sharply over the past several years, the forum for the 30-minute nighttime newscast is hardly dead in America. However, the television networks know that in order to keep the younger end of the crucial 25-54 demographic interested in the network news, especially the tech-savvy 18-34-year-old crowd, a little reinventing of the wheel needs to be done.
Now I’m not saying the wheel is network news broadcasts themselves. Networks have tried over and over again during the past few years to bump up ratings by changing hosts such as CBS and NBC have done, or by switching to a two-host system which ABC tried briefly in 2006 before Bob Woodruff was seriously injured while reporting in Iraq. I’m talking about “the wheel” as network newscasts on line.
Up until now a network’s website, which was heavily promoted throughout the newscast, featured repackaged news segments. Basically the website served as a dumping ground for features you may have missed or would like to see again. But that begs the question, if you didn’t see the feature the first time around are you really inclined to go searching a website for it? It’s the old “tree in the forest” adage at play here. If you’re not watching the network news in the first place, are you going to go out of your way to find a network news feature on the network’s website? Probably not, and I highly doubt anyone has been so moved by a network news feature recently they e-mailed all of their friends and said, “You’ve got to see this piece on Medicare from NBC!”
ABC News is trying to change that, and I love their approach detailed in this article from the New York Times. ABC’s internet webcast, titled simply “World News”, features regular ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson as host (most of the time). What’s unique about this though is Gibson merely isn’t cuing up eight or nine feature already shown on the ABC World News report that night. Instead, this 15-minute webcast features stories shot by the ABC News staff specifically for the webcast. What’s really interesting to me is how these stories are presented.
Jason Samuels, the senior producer of the webcast, takes a fresh approach to presenting the news to a generation of people whose lives don’t fit the network television schedule like generations past.
- “I don’t have to count the seconds,” he said. “I just try to put in a good show that’s around 15 minutes. Do one long stand-up, do much longer sound bites, play an interview,” he said, summing up his advice to the staff. “Produce a story in any way you think is engaging — there are no rules.”
That right there sums up EXACTLY what network news programs have to do with their online content. Break all of the rules– the same rules that have been dragging down network news ratings for more than 20 years now. Reporters aren’t tied to 90-second or 2-minute packages, and unlike most newscasts stories aren’t bogged down with network promos masquerading as news stories or celebrity gossip. And staples of newscasts from the past, or newsmagazine shows prior to Chris Hansen busting one pervert after another, in-depth interviews are featured.
My favorite part of this webcast is the lack of commercials. There’s only one commercial, 15 seconds long, at the start of the webcast. After that, it’s laid out for convenience. The webcast on October 11, 2007, was a mere 16:27 long, and starts with updated headlines. The remaining 14 minutes starts with Gibson giving “signposts” to upcoming stories. Those same signposts are featured underneath the video player screen. Not only are there no commercial interruptions, you know exactly what you will get in that newscast, something someone my age (soon to be 30) appreciates greatly. Instead of dressing up reporters, sets, or story ideas with 53-year-old adults trying to look hip, ABC manages to deliver the news straight and without the bells and whistles others in the past have tried.
The big question is, will the coveted 18-34-year-old crowd actually tune in on a regular basis? To date, ABC averages 4.5 million downloads of the World News webcast per month. That averages to only about 150,000 a day, or roughly the amount of households watching a major market local newscast on any given night. ABC has a great product here, but the trick is to tell those 18-34-year-olds who don’t watch the network news on a regular basis to actually sign on and listen to a guy they probably remember as the host of Good Morning America 15 years ago.
