Comments on: BBC: Video for Video’s Sake Isn’t Worth It

By: Michael Meiser

Michael Meiser — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:48:59 +0000

I hope they read this btw.

PBS, and interesting man many more mainstream media publishers like ABC and NBC are even ahead of them. This baffles me. Yes, you can get the complete nightly news and much more via video podcast.

By: Michael Meiser

Michael Meiser — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:46:28 +0000

The BBC guy is completely wrong. A moron. Yes a moron. the reason why people don’t “seek out” video is because the BBC’s video content is burried under layers of inaccessible crap. There search and discovery mechanisms for video are in the dark ages. We’re still in the early stages of search and discovery for video… so mayb it would be appropriate to call them in the stone age.

Someone should clue them about the wonders of RSS and blogging mechanisms.

RSS isn’t about piping videos to desktop aggregators and ipods. Yes it does that well, but it’s also a subscription mechanism, a notification mechains, a key element to search and discovery mechaisms… i.e. mediaRSS is used directly by yahoo and infinite others. most important of all having granular portable videos that can be linked to, embedded, emailed, commented on, and IM’d about… to encourage basic word of mouth behavior.

The BBC has not gotten with the program yet on video podcasting / vlogging. They sadly remain without a clue.

-Mike

By: Ty Graham

Ty Graham — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:03:43 +0000

Isn’t it obvious that stories provide the relevancy to match the great numbers in video? The story has to promote the purpose of the video because we’ve all seen bad video and hence no one is going to trust the content is inherently relevant unless something else or someone recommended it’s worth watching as a compliment to the story.

By: David

David — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:03:22 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever watched a news video on the BBC site, on CNN.com, or the NYT site. As Marc says, it’s a waste of time especially if the same–or more likely, much more–information is available in the text. The video IMO really needs to add something that’s difficult to describe, depict a spectacle of some sort, or provide an emotional draw that can’t easily be conveyed in words, such as a spectacular catch, a battle in Iraq, a speech by JFK etc.

By: Jackson West

Jackson West — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:39:59 +0000

Have to agree with the Beeb on this one. I’m a headline scanner, always have been. Broadcast news was just the torture you had to go through to get the late sports scores.

Watching news now — where someone narrates from a script over B-roll, with some soundbitey interviews thrown in — is a chore.

By: Gary Bourgeault

Gary Bourgeault — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:22:37 +0000

Clifton’s medicine saying, “News video clips need to be relevant, embedded near the stories they relate to, and add something that’s not achieved by the text,” to me is pretty close to the truth as far as online news video goes.

In my online news experience, those very elements are the deciding factor on whether I want to go further into the story via video.

I’ve had a few experiences where the news sites didn’t practice this, and I never go to them as a result. Online video is a commitment that has to be a relevant, compliment to the story, or it will harm rather than help those presenting it.

By: BBC: Embeds Work

BBC: Embeds Work — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:07:24 +0000

[...] Luft, Om Malik, and Liz Gannes all highlight how the BBC is looking for greater relevance and value-add in online video use. [...]

By: Marc Siry

Marc Siry — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:40:35 +0000

The growing number of video-only story links is why I’ve stopped using CNN.com for news browsing. I don’t have time to click through five repurposed TV segments to get caught up on the day’s events; I need a text-only synopsis I can browse before I decide to invest the time needed to watch a video. I agree that the NY Times does it correctly- consequently, I watch a moderate amount of video there, but I scour their entire site on a daily basis.

By: GigaOM News Videos, what are they good for… Relevance «

GigaOM News Videos, what are they good for… Relevance « — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:01:09 +0000

[...] Written by Om Malik Thursday, July 5, 2007 at 3:00 PM PT | No comments It was exactly a year ago – long before Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion – I had pointed out that the video bubble was getting out of control. Well, it seems like I was a tad too early, for funding has flown freely into video companies/start-ups, and the buzz continues to grow around everything-online-video. “With a pinch of video all your troubles will go away,” quips Liz over on NewTeeVee. [...]

By: William

William — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:10:55 +0000

I think that the BBC News results might be skewed in that they site doesn’t emphasize video effectively. I’m even surprised that they get 40% rates on video near the stories content. The reason they get 2% on the video section is because it’s hard to find it and get to it and even then the BBC News video delivery is substandard in quality and playback. The response to getting up to 40% watching within stories should be enough to say good lord people really want this stuff and more of it.