Archive for the ‘Online’ Category

Weather Central adds Facebook, Twitter integration to product

Weather Central, one of the world’s largest weather graphics and data providers has announced that its 3D:LIVE offering will now include ways for forecasters to directly sends portions of their forecasts to social networking sites.

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WNNFans.com directs users to Facebook page

World News Now, ABC News’ overnight news broadcast has been promoting the domain “WNNFans.com” on the air as an easier way to get viewers to visit its Facebook page.

The domain automatically sends users who enter it to www.facebook.com/ABCWorldNewsNow (it’s worth nothing the directory name ABC uses “ABCWorldNewsNow” is a bit long, clunky and hard to remember, making the domain even more of a good idea).

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MSNBC.com adds @breakingnews to homepage

Following its agreement to take over the @breakingnews Twitter account, MSNBC.com has started including the tweets on its homepage under under the “Just in” tab.

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ABC, Fox duop debuts new set, graphics

WGXA-TV, the Fox affiliate serving Macon, Ga., added ABC programming to its digital subchannel and launched newscasts with shared facilities and talent under the “NewsCentral” banner. Along with this, a new set and graphics debuted.

Another photo and commentary after the jump.

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Barrington Broadcasting rolls out new Web design to its stations

Barrington Broadcasting Group has rolled out a new design to 26 station Web sites around the country.

The new design, based heavily off of its previous layout, has a much cleaner look, dropping the different colored news categories.

The new site design was also built heavily around search engine optimization. (more…)

Detroit station streaming live video from city snow plows

WDIV-TV, the Post-Newsweek station in Detroit, reached a deal earlier this year to equip 25 city snow plows with smartphones capable of broadcasting live video via Sprint 3G service and Streambox, reports Broadcasting & Cable.

“On big weather days, the question is always, ‘How do we show people what the conditions on the road are and what’s going on?’” says WDIV News Operations Manager Jeff Liebman. “Then we had an idea: Why don’t we show people what the inside of the county snowplows are looking at? They’re traveling on the roads themselves, and you’ve got to figure they’re pretty safe.”

Unfortunately, the setup hasn’t gotten much use this winter since Detroit has managed to avoid a heavy number of major storms. However, the idea is certainly interesting and worth considering for other types of coverage.

MSNBC.com page goes through ‘time warp’

Browsing MSNBC.com this afternoon brought back a sense of deja vu; one of the stories featured on the site’s main page appeared on the site’s old template for an unknown reason.

Update: MSNBC.com has fixed this and the page is now displaying on the Elkhart Project’s standard layout.

‘Nightly’ and ‘Today’ boasting Vancouver-themed Twitter backgrounds

The Twitter pages for “NBC Nightly News” and the “Today Show” are sporting Olympics-themed Twitter backgrounds that incorporate the shows’ logos into the shield-like logo NBC uses for its Olympics coverage. Interestingly, however, MSNBC’s hasn’t been updated.

‘Nightly’ adds social media, technology icons to close

“NBC Nightly News” has added Twitter, SMS, Facebook and Podcast icons to its closing copyright graphic, as shown above. The graphic also includes the “always on” tagline and the show’s Web site address.

ESPN to rebrand ESPN360.com as ESPN3.com

In an interesting move, ESPN will rename it’s broadband channel April 4.

“The name ESPN3.com more closely aligns with the existing naming convention for our networks,” said Sean Bratches, executive vice president, sales and marketing. “We have approached this as a network for years, and as users have become more accustomed to engaging with content across various screens, it made sense to make adjustments that reflect both the product’s and the industry’s evolution.”

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Anatomy of a news package

It’s Friday, and we thought maybe you’d need a funny video. From the BBC program “Newswipe,” this video breaks down what’s in a video news package… from the walking talking shot to the graphs and illustrations to grab viewer attention.

May contain some colorful British humor and language. Via TVByTheNumbers.com

CNN.com adds 360-degree Haiti feature

CNN.com has added a 360-degree view of Haiti. The unique part of this view is that it was taken from a vehicle driving down a street and users can pause or even pan around while the clip is still moving.

It’s an interesting application that’s does do a good job of “placing” the user at the scene of the news, but could benefit from a bit more information. One possible improvement would be “hot spots” where users can click or hover over to get more details. For example, perhaps a location where a rescue took place.

Check out the interactive clip here.