It took a couple of tries including an odd warning screen but I finally saw the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in live simulcast tonight. Nothing earth shattering but good video quality — fairly decent even in full-screen mode on a 21-inch screen, no buffering issues and a painless way — when everything loads right — to watch a live newscast. Just now, the on-demand version started right up — in IE — Microsoft commercial and all. So what happened last night to prevent me from being part of “history”? A few things, as Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital explained today:
— The app doesn’t work with my default browser, Firefox; it also doesn’t work with Macs. This is explained in a simulcast help box but the link for that wasn’t visible until I scrolled within the player box to look for it.
— The problems some would-be viewers, including me, had with IE were related to some technical glitches. Explains Kramer (no relation): “Because of the intense number of people coming on at the same time it was difficult to isolate some problems that made the experience choppy for some, but we were able to fix them and give many more people the ability to watch the show after it aired.” No actual numbers yet but Kramer says traffic to the site overall doubled Tuesday. March Madness on Demand supported a large number of simultaneous users but the traffic was divided among multiple feeds.
— The warning screen I saw tonight telling me access is denied and to see my webmaster is what people see when they try to watch out of market; following that, the previous show on demand. I may have been slightly ahead of my market, hence the warning the first few times I tried. I finally got in about four minutes into the show; the rest was uneventful.
Overall, says Kramer, “We were largely happy with our experience web experience last night and thrilled that many people were able to enjoy a simulcast of a network news show for the first time in history.”
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