Tue
Jul 25 2017
12:10 pm

The News Sentinel has been fearuring these weird videos that take a long time to impart not much information.

Here's a recent one.

It starts with a 30 second commercial followed by a one minute slide show that a) lists five things that pretty much everybody already knows, and b) could be read as text in a bullet point list in about 10 seconds or less.

At least they let you skip the 30 second commercial after a few seconds. I think this is a new "feature," not sure.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of these lately. There are worse examples with even less useful information and really poorly rendered graphics, but this is one from today's front page so there you go.

What's the point of these videos, other than to waste your time and bandwidth?

Topics:
bizgrrl's picture

The KNS videos have been

The KNS videos have been driving me crazy. I go to a newspaper link and get a video only? Even the TV stations put the text of the video separately so I don't have to sit through a ridiculous video. Give me a break, KNS. Stop with the video only "articles".

Andy Axel's picture

The Tennessean

has been unreadable crap for the last seven years. Welcome to the show.

Andy Axel's picture

Also too

Scroll down in comments in this blog post

(link...)

Submitted by bizgrrl on Wed, 2015/10/07 - 8:30pm.

Wow! I'm sort of shocked.

Can't really see Gannet's web presence being any worse than the KNS.

LeftWingCracker's picture

We've been GANNETTIZED

Randy,

It's happening here with the Commercial Appeal as well, it is getting to the point where it is unreadable. At least we have the Daily News and the weekly Flyer (which updates every day) as alternatives, y'all don't even have that now. Just sad.

trobinson's picture

It's a brave new world out

It's a brave new world out there, guess you didn't get the memo. It's about "media content" now not news. Look at the job description of a "Content Strategist" for Gannett. It's long on Marketing Strategies and "research" (you know, Googling) and short on Journalism:
(link...)

  • Applies research in creating high quality content and marketing initiatives that best serves key audience needs.
  • Edits content that needs a high-level line editing touch and sometimes taking a hands-on approach to accelerate the path to publication.

This is not your daddy's news room. That is gone and our country is worse for it.

Jamie Satterfield's picture

Content strategist

Without weighing in on the topic of the thread, I did want to offer that content strategists don't do the news gathering part, at least in my experience. We reporters still do that. The content strategists get it out to the public, and as a techno idiot, I leave all that to them, though I'm trying to learn how to do a video. So, the definition on paper is a bit misleading.

barker's picture

Plain English

A content strategist is an editor.

Andy Axel's picture

*

Coulda fooled me.

prk166's picture

Video vs Print

The reason for these videos is the same reason that Google is willing to bleed for YouTube ( it still loses a lot of money ) and Facebook is pushing more and more video content, it attracts and _keeps_ eyeballs.

The promise of online advertising was data to track how well it worked. It's been around. Advertisers are starting to realize how little anyone pays attention to those ads inserted in your Facebook news feed or in the margins of a content site.

The content providers, Facebook, Google and others see video as a way of "forcing" users to watch the ads. They - accurately or not - see it as a way of ensuring ad revenues. At least for now, it seems like advertisers are still willing to pay for those video eyeballs.

I suspect this is why you're seeing legacy newspapers online pushing the video aspect. Some of it is video production is dirt cheap these days. And a big part of it is trying to capture more revenues for the same content.

Andy Axel's picture

Advertisers are starting to

Advertisers are starting to realize how little anyone pays attention to those ads

...so now they force you to consume bandwidth by hogging the space over the banner, propagating trackers, triggering video or audio that you can't turn off, force delays before you can access content, etc.

And I've never paid attention to the ads. Now they just make me resentful.

bizgrrl's picture

Exactly.

Exactly.

Sandra Clark's picture

The End of Advertising ... Why it had to die

New book by Andrew Essex makes the case that ads are annoying -- always have been in whatever medium -- and it's becoming increasingly easier to block them.

I was out yesterday, peddling community partnerships in Knox TN Today, and a fine young man co-opted my time at one stop to explain how he had "eliminated the middleman" by developing 8-10 minute videos to promote his dad's business on Facebook.

He invited me back when KTT is "more stable." (grin)

When consumers can and do block commercially produced 30- and 60-second commercials, who thinks they'll hold still for longer, less professional ads embedded into weaker content? Won't happen.

I'm liking the Knox TN Today model more and more.

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