A reader asked my thought a week ago on the stations' websites and I wrote then that I'd take a look and write my comments. Going into this entry, note I am not and do not pretend to be an expert on web sites. I probably have learned a thing or two just by looking at the sites the last week. As far an overall top web site, I find it hard to really know or decide. I went into this thinking I'd judge on the site's clean looks (less cluttered), how well it keeps it updated through day (and night), and the quality of so called web extras. The later I will discuss in a separate blog, because I feel that is where the Wichita TV sites and that of the industry severely lack in. I will write about the sites in no real ranking order other than alphabetical.
KAKE: The so called breaking news station, certainly hasn't extended that philosophy to the web. Of the three stations' sites, KAKE updates their site less in the off hours than the other two. And off hours I mean even after 5 or 6 PM. Imagine their newscasts if that was the case. It seems as if they have a 9-5 person doing their site. Case in point the June 8 Newton incident where a man allegedly points a gun at Newton police and they shoot him. He dies. It happened at 2AM on a Friday morning. Now if something like this happened (#1) during the day and (#2) in Wichita you could be sure they would all be there and probably at least one would break in to normal programming for a newsroom anchor shot, if not a live reporter at-the-scene shot. They normally treat these sorts of stories as a big deal. The amount of people who depend on internet access at work as the sole means for web access is decreasing, compared to a few years ago as computers are getting real cheap and high speed internet access is accessible to nearly all at home. By 9AM when some people are at work, and hadn't watched the morning news, they are clicking to the websites to see what has happened over night. If you clicked on KAKE.com it wouldn't have been there. Meanwhile KWCH and KSN had it on their sites. Was it a lot of information? No, but at least it is on the sites. As far as layout of the KAKE site, the main title bar is clean looking. The big stories are larger in size and easy to click on. Then there are some other stories on the site that have screen grabs from the stories for video icons. This makes it further easier to read. On the right they have a list of video and just the title of the video. I like this feature because it is easy to find something without having to read through a preview of what it is about. The video icons for the main stories give me that. I will say they need to clean out their old stories or organize them better. I was going through the news section. And by the 3rd page right after stories from this week, stories like the Carr Brothers trial and my favorite, "2002: the Vote," pop up. If I hadn't lived here a while and didn't see the "2002" I would have thought the Carr trial and the 2002 election were happening now. If they want those on the site, put them in a different section or under a different heading.
http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/126047.html
KSN: KSN probably has the best updated site of three and consistently. Note, I didn't say best overall, just best update. You usually can even get video for their main story from the 10PM cast, by at least 10:30 if not sooner. Their day stories are usually popping up with video by 6PM, and the updates are filed through the day, more consistent than the others. The title bar reminds me of the opening of the old NBC game show Scrabble. Like the game show, but do not like the title bar. They also need to change Paul Petite's picture since apparently he has had a remodel job done to his hair. Their most popular story feature would be more helpful if it just included news stories. As soon as there is a cloud in the air, radars from all over Kansas gets the hits and clutter up the most popular along with the ever popular game Mahjong on office days. I think the list of weather radars could be displayed elsewhere, still on the main page, but not along side the news most popular. I like the large picture icons for the other news stories below the main one, but I wished they had more of them listed in that way. Other local stories are in smaller print below the icons and difficult to navigate through.
KWCH: Very similar to the image on air, the site is pretty safe and conservative, which isn't a bad thing. The site is updated, somewhat, but could be improved in that area. I think the site does look a little too cluttered with the "Latest headlines." They could stand to have video icons. That would kind of pull them away from the white background and give it a little more of a polished look.
As far as web extras, that is an entirely different topic I will take up next week. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves of these web sites. They may think they are doing well online, but this is an area all 3 are failing miserably at. -Hal
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2 comments:
I wouldn't concider KSN's web site to be the most updated. Yes, they put a few stories on a day. But, those stories usually aren't hard news stories, just few feature stories. Not a very good news site if you ask me.
Online sites are the way of the future, to let your product be known best, you need to utilize the web as much as possible and have your content be easy to access.
These 3 stations should be recording most stories, or just have newscasts showing the product off constantly. I noticed early in May during the tornado outbreaks, KWCH and KSN streamed the tornado coverage online, both should do this more often and KAKE should do this as well. Streaming online shows off your product to the world and not all times people are available to have a television or be in the viewing area
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