How much do sportscasters...

[Tripe Face]

...contribute to your station's website?

Of late I've found that some of the best local website run by TV news departments offer some of the weakest sports material.

They promise "all the local high school scores" but they are two weeks old.

For years I've been listening to tv sports people whine about how they have less and less air time. Well why not put the stuff you can't get on the air on your website?

Where I work, the website actually draws more visitors than our newscast draws viewers.

[SpxGrunt]

Our website is set up so we can only add content that has already aired. Also, if your website gets more hits than viewers watching your show, there's a real problem there.

[BrgrKing15]

At my old station, really small market, I did the entire website. Everything from updated local scores and every sportscast.

Now, I'm in a mid-market and have a web team that handles all of that. They put sportscasts up, relative AP articles and local football/basketball scores.

[Another side]

[quote=Tripe Face;317486Where I work, the website actually draws more visitors than our newscast draws viewers.[/quote]

... I'd start sending out tapes. What market size (range) are you in, and how many hits a day is the site getting?

[Vulcan]

I'm not surprised, Tripe.

The biggest challenge stations will have is the transition to being more of a "brand" than a "broadcaster." If more people are turning to news-on-demand, you need to have the product where they can reach it.

CNN.com has massive amounts of traffic, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it had more web hits than viewers. That adds a little meaning to the whole campaign about "The Most Trusted Name in News." We don't care where you get it, as long as it's from CNN.

Terry Heaton has a lot of interesting thoughts about this future (http://www.thepomoblog.com/), and it is coming. The traditional eyeballs-to-dollars model is disintegrating right in front of us.

[WalMartNation]

For scores, the AP won't let you cut and paste scores... at least that's what I'm told by the higher ups in Seattle.

Video wise, we can only put vid that we shoot, and that isn't NBA, NCAA, NFL, or MLB... which basically means preps. That we do a lot of in addition to putting on our HSgametime.com site which all Belo shops are doing now.

We put a lot of Sonics, Mariners, and UWash./WSU/Gonzaga pressers/post on our page, (we have 3 sports producers and one of them takes care of it all when he's not producing the 10/11 sportscasts) but it has to be what we shot... not off ANY kind of feed (other than our fiber or microwave lines obviously). The NFL won't allow you to put more than :45 of post/pressers EVEN IF WE SHOOT IT whether it's postgame or Holmgren/players from the Monday/Wednesday pressers. In protest, our producer (he's a spx prod not a web producer) decided we would do no Seahawks sound on the web all year.

And to stick up for the sports depts that don't put anything on, sometimes you don't have the staff, or the web producer is gone by 4pm everyday and you aren't getting sound back in house until late afternoon, therefore, they don't touch it. We have one web producer that wouldn't know the difference between P.J. Carlesimo and Mike Holmgren... so maybe it's better if news web producers don't do stuff.

[southwesternguy]

Video wise, we can only put vid that we shoot, and that isn't NBA, NCAA, NFL, or MLB... which basically means preps.



Our web people told us the same thing, but I see other stations around the country putting NCAA and NBA stuff on their site. I look at a lot of websites of former co-workers and friends, and they put that stuff on their sites.
What's the real rule there?

[WalMartNation]

Our web people told us the same thing, but I see other stations around the country putting NCAA and NBA stuff on their site. I look at a lot of websites of former co-workers and friends, and they put that stuff on their sites.
What's the real rule there?

To be honest, I don't know the "real" rule... just what the Belo brass in my neck of the woods tell us. My shop is scared to death of breaking any rules so we're under strict orders to play it safe.

[adam & doctor drew]

In protest, our producer (he's a spx prod not a web producer) decided we would do no Seahawks sound on the web all year.


I'm sure the Seahawks, and the NFL, are devastated.:rolleyes:

[WalMartNation]

I'm sure the Seahawks, and the NFL, are devastated.:rolleyes:

They're losing all kinds of sleep over it. Seriously though, we do the weekly Holmgren show so the station and team have a decent relationship... believe it or not they do expect us to promote them in all ways possible... including our website. They've asked why we don't put cut soundbites on our site, our sports EP told them why, and their media relations guy was kind of pissed. At who? I don't know or care.