| |
ABC Reshapes the Evening News for the Web
Huddled with a producer in an editing suite on a recent Friday afternoon, the ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore enthusiastically helped put the finishing touches on a video account of his recent trip to Greenland to see the effects of global warming.
The segment did not look like a normal network news report: It showed Mr. Blakemore riding a sled across Greenland’s ice sheet and casually addressing the camera while wearing a black North Face parka and sunglasses.
But Mr. Blakemore’s video diary, the first of three documenting his trip, was not being produced for “World News With Charles Gibson” — rather, it was aimed at the network’s afternoon Webcast, which is simply called “World News.”
Executives at the broadcast networks know they have opportunities online that they do not have on television — namely, to take chances by testing new forms of news delivery and new types of storytelling. They are also mindful that making their content relevant online is a good way to attract the younger audiences who are less likely to tune in to the evening news on television.
But ABC is the only major broadcast network that is using the staff of its evening newscast to produce a separate and distinct daily program for a Web audience. The 15-minute Webcast often features Mr. Gibson in the anchor chair, but the similarities end there: the segments can run long, and they purposely look raw and personal, as if they were made for MTV rather than ABC.
Over the course of 20 months, the Webcast has evolved from a basic distillation of the day’s news into an original program that incorporates video blogs, first-person essays and interviews. It covers many of the same stories as its television sibling, but often in a different way: in one example, the day after President Bush announced gradual troop cuts in Iraq, Mr. Gibson was shown debriefing the network’s chief White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz, in the Webcast for a full 3 minutes and 20 seconds — an eternity on a half-hour television newscast.
ABC News’s main network competitors, CBS and NBC, are for the moment mainly using the Web to repackage their regular nightly news shows. “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” is streamed live on CBSNews.com at 6:30 p.m. NBC takes a different approach, posting the full half-hour “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” each night after 10 p.m. rather than live.
But the ABC Webcast is an entirely different animal, sometimes resembling a younger, more technologically advanced version of the traditional 6:30 p.m. report. It is intended in part for people who view Web pages on iPods and cellphones, and ABC executives say they are deliberately aiming to please the 25- to 54-year-olds whom every news organization covets.
Every night there is a good dose of technology and pop culture coverage. For instance, Google puts out a daily list of what it calls “rising searches” — search terms that are suddenly more popular among Web users. And ABC producers select three to mention on the Webcast, usually in a one-minute segment.
So far ABC has been more focused on editorial experimentation than on garnering advertising dollars. The “World News” Webcast does not have any commercial interruptions, though AT&T and Pfizer have run advertisements just before the podcast version starts.
“It’s a real open playing field online,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at the ad-buying agency Horizon Media. ABC’s Webcast, he said, has the competitive advantage of its brand name, but it is also “competing with newspapers, radio and Web-based organizations” for ad dollars.
And while “World News” reaches a tiny fraction of the broadcast audience — 4.5 million views and downloads a month, most of which come in the form of podcasts downloaded automatically by iTunes users — the network regards it as a first step toward a future that looks increasingly digital and multimedia.
“We knew that we had to, and wanted to, occupy some space online,” said Jon Banner, the executive producer of both the broadcast and the Webcast.
The Web product was introduced in January 2006, back when Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas first became co-anchors of “World News Tonight.” After Mr. Woodruff was seriously injured in Iraq, Mr. Gibson was introduced as the anchor, and ABC’s attempts to tinker with the “World News” brand were largely discarded — except for the Webcast.
Unlike the broadcast, the afternoon edition of “World News” can be relatively lenient with time, said Jason Samuels, who, as senior producer on charge of digital content, oversees the Web presence of both the broadcast and the Webcast. “I don’t have to count the seconds,” he said. “I just try to put in a good show that’s around 15 minutes.”
Mr. Samuels started overseeing the Webcast in April and said he has tried to push correspondents and producers to escape the package formula that dominates television news. “Do one long stand-up, do much longer sound bites, play an interview,” he said, summing up his advice to the staff. “Produce a story in any way you think is engaging — there are no rules.”
Mr. Gibson, who is the oldest of the three network anchors, is the host of the Web newscast two or three days a week, and other hosts fill in when he is on assignment. He calls the Webcast his “toe in the water” in the digital media space.
“What I’m hoping is that the digital end of ABC News will begin to produce enough revenue to devolve to the benefit of ‘World News,’” he said.
Julia Bain, an associate producer for “World News,” ABC’s afternoon Webcast that is the online version of the network’s evening newscast, meant to appeal to a younger audience.
For now, all the networks say their online news programming is at a nascent stage. NBC said elements of “Nightly News” are streamed on MSNBC.com 10 million times each month. CBS, whose “Evening News” is mired in third place in the broadcast ratings race, would not release traffic figures.
Meanwhile, correspondents like Mr. Blakemore say they appreciate the Web because it presents another outlet for their work. Dan Harris, the anchor of “World News Sunday” who regularly substitutes for Mr. Gibson, said the Webcast was his favorite show to anchor.
“I feel less pressure to wear a tie, sit up straight, and make sure everything I say is perfectly enunciated,” Mr. Harris said. “I have an opportunity to be much closer to who I actually am, instead of the TV version of myself.”
