Part 2 of of my review of the local TV stations' websites looks at what they are not doing and what they need to do in the future. As many TV insiders have said and written, the future for TV and media in general is the internet. The question is how TV stations can incorporate what they currently are doing and still get ad revenue at the same time.
Currently the three stations' sites are regurgitations of their newscasts in a printed form with video available for some stories. As I said before, some of the stations do the video and updating better then others. There is little material that takes advantage of having a platform like a web page to display the information. That leads to me to a question as to whether each station has a person dedicated solely to the internet and not only posting material which already ran on the air, but unique web-only material. And I am not talking extra tips for planting flowers, a list of recalled toys, or other such things that are known as web extras in Today's environment. I see KWCH has a web producer, based on reading his blog on the site (more on the blogs later). I am not sure if the other two have people doing strictly web material and not filling other roles. I'd be curious if this occurs.
As for web extras, it doesn't have to be really all that hard. For being a TV station, they have an advantage in that they have access to video that can easily be turned into pictures for all sorts of stories. One easy "web exclusive" the stations could stand to do is list or even stream old stories related to the news of the day. For instance if some legendary Wichita resident dies, show me old stories the station did a few years ago or if they have it available decades ago. When the tornado hit Greensburg, web streaming of the coverage was good on some of the sites. In the future, though after an event like that, I am sure there will be more web exclusive content like interactive maps of the town with quotes from survivors and showing their locations. By clicking on pictures on a map you would see and hear their perspectives. This is just a lame attempt on my part of trying to envision what will happen one day with the websites. And they need to get going on it and start allocating the resources to it.
One extra I wanted to touch on was from KWCH's site. They have blogs from a weekend anchor, a backup-backup meteorologist, web master, and camera guy. (If the other stations have them, I couldn't find them very easily, that means they need to put them in a spot easier to find.) The blog from Michael Schwanke is consistently good and provides interesting perspective. One interesting note from a recent blog is the staff recently attended a 6 hour seminar on the future of the web at KWCH. Hopefully they may get the ball rolling in developing more interactive web content for the area. As for the other blogs, (KWCH staffers, don't send me hate mail as you have in past postings, when I criticize your product) I think the blog from the camera guy is a great idea, but he needs to lay off some of the back-and-forth inside baseball conversations with the webmaster/producer, whatever the real term is now. The camera guy's blog is a perfect example of something that could be a great web extra, besides the interactive component. It provides some good tips and pointers and comes across in a real understandable Kansas way. Many people have home video cameras and lets face it, who better to go to questions on how to shoot or problems that develop, then people who take pictures professionally on a daily basis. A TV station should have a few people around who can answer these questions and give tips. This is an example of a spot on the web that could easily be sponsored by a camera shop or something. I also think the blogs as a whole should be placed a little higher up and easily found on the KWCH site. I think it could be an example of a successful component to a good TV web site in using what you have and tailoring those to niches of the audience, that you normally couldn't do or didn't have the time to do on the air. -Hal
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