A little disillusioned with video right now
I got to talking about video this weekend with my dad (also in the news biz) and the value of it for newspapers. Two years ago, we were given a chunk of change and allowed to build a studio in an extra room in the basement, near the morgue. Video was all the rage and we needed to put as much on the web as we could. We needed to produce shows, and film interviews and debates in our shiny studio.
We hired three videographers – one who was geared more towards advertising and filming “premercials” (Not fond of that word), one for the evening shift who could really get some great sports video and another during the day to cover news. We produced quality stuff, and everyone pitched in to help. I got a crash course in producing, running the switcher for our three-cam setup in the studio, and editing the final project. I’m grateful for that.
But two years later and we have stopped doing our twice-daily news show because no one had time to script and anchor it, and we weren’t growing viewership. We had to lay off a videographer. We still have our advertiser videographer, whose job has evolved into online banner creation on top of producing a weekly cooking show. And the videographer that’s left is run ragged from having to shoot/produce/edit news AND sports.
I’m looking at our stats. A large majority of our videos are getting maybe 30 or 40 views, whereas a not-very-good 40 second clip I shot outside my front door last week showing the season’s first snow got over 200 views. (I know these numbers aren’t metro paper numbers, but for our market, 200 views is pretty good.) A rather dry press conference video regarding the Nebraska State Fair move to Grand Island has nearly 300 views – because it is a hot-button issue here. (I am discounting any Husker video we do because I think we could put up video of Coach Pelini reading the phone book and Husker fans would watch it.)
Part of our problem is that we don’t embed the video often enough within it’s accompanying story (Thank you @gmarkham for bringing this up to me on Twitter last night. I wasn’t even thinking about that when all this came up.) This is something I’m hoping will change when we switch to new software for the website. It’s a bit of a process to embed YouTube code in our stories presently, and so we rely on latest video showing up in the list on the front page and only embed if it’s a big story.
But we often take the time to shoot and put up video that’s unrelated, or too big to embed. We filmed a recent senatorial debate and had to break it up into about 7 or 8 videos, uploaded over the course of a week. And no one has really watched any of them. It seems like wasted effort to me.
Here is my dream plan:
1. Donate our expensive handhelds that no one is using to area schools with the stipulation that they use it to film videos we can put on our site. This was an idea of our presentation editor and I like it a lot.
2. Buy inexpensive FlipVideo cams for the reporters and show them it’s as easy to download/upload video as it is to pull audio from their recorders. (This is contingent on them actually using the things. It’s a nice idea, but sometimes they are too busy, you know, doing the reporter thing to have time to shoot video as well. At least this is the argument I hear the most.)
3. Study our view stats and try to discover and predict what it is our readers actually want to see. Just looking at the first page of stats, I can already tell they prefer football highlight reels to pressers, and breaking news/hot topic videos to debates.
4. Focus on what the readers want and not what we think they want. I realize this goes against the advice of Rob Curley and Mindy McAdams, who are emphasizing giving the readers what they want alongside the stuff we think they should want – but we aren’t a metro. We’re small potatoes compared to the news sites I constantly see advice like this geared towards. We’re small and regional and are very very lucky to even have a videographer, much less two of them. I just think we sometimes waste their talents on videos that aren’t watched.
5. Get better at embedding video within the stories instead of leaving them as standalone.
6. Stop videoing grip and grins.
We have the ability to produce good stuff but we lack the time and people-power. This dream plan of mine means finding ways to eliminate video we don’t need to be shooting to free up our people to shoot the good stuff.
I don’t know that anyone has the magic formula for newspapers and video, or indeed if there even is one. I’m very much a fan of trying anything and everything and seeing what sticks. We’ve tried daily news shows and they failed. We’ve tried shooting what we think the readers want, and sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. Now we need to take what we’ve learned these past two years and figure out what works for us.
Tags: Video, video plan
What people want at our news site is sports. Plain and simple. And as I look around and sample the conversation on blogs, many other news sites are winning a video audience with sports and sports shows. It’s hard to sell the newsroom on the fact that what may be of interest to you isn’t always of interest to the viewing public. Can you explain a little bit more (in detail) about what your remaining videographer shoots a week? Not the commercial videographer but the content videographer?
Sure! Our content videographer has been primarily covering sports. With the exception of the senate debates we sponsored, his content has focused on local sports, a talking head “show” we do with our head sports writer before every Husker game, and Husker game highlights when we can get him a press pass. The news-related video he has done has been sparse.
Basically, he took over the role of our head videographer who worked mostly evenings and weekends and covered sports. If something ‘newsy’ happened when he wasn’t on, he would be called in to shoot/edit it.
To give you an idea, check out multimedia page: http://www.theindependent.com/multimedia – 90% sports, 10% news stuff.
No denying sports are big and parents want to see their kid playing – but I’m betting that our local sports views come from parents of kids in those games. What I’d like to try is getting the parents to shoot games and allow them to post it on our website. We have that ability, but we’re not taking advantage of it. If we use UGC for local sports at least, that would free up a LOT of time for a videographer to be available for other things.
Then again, in our market, we don’t have big stories every day. But with election season here, we’ve done nothing with video. We interviewed people voting early, but not on video (and would people watch that?) Other than the debates, we haven’t had candidates into our spiffy studio to answer questions.
I don’t know, I’m rambling now, but while I think sports video is valuable and big around here, there are ways to get it without expending our resources that we’re not trying.
1 – Isn’t there a certain amount of vanity involved here? Not being a “newspaper” person, but being involved in media because of Corn Nation, I realize I’m on the outside looking in, but the question is – where did the idea that video was all the rage come in the first place? Who wants to watch newspaper reporters on video? They don’t belong there, for crying out loud, that’s why they’re in newspaper, isn’t it? (That’s partially tongue in cheek, but maybe not.)
2- I do work in the technology industry. Guess what!? At the customer site I’m at today, your site isn’t blocked by the web content filter. The other two you reference are under the ‘personal pages’ category. And since the company I’m at uses the same filtering list that’s used all over the world, they’re blocked all over the place, too. Used to be just K-12 schools (libraries) heavily used web content filters, but now they’re being installed all over the place for two reasons:
a. http is now a virus-infested protocol.
b. online video sucks massive amounts of bandwidth, so we block it when we can. if it’s not part of the business, it’s blocked.
In other words, it’s more common that streaming is blocked within organizations because it’s too expensive to allow people to roam free.
3 – With regards to the Husker stuff. You have no idea what it means to be an out of state Husker fan, or a native out of state. From that regard, you’re not a little town newspaper, you are a lifeline. Do you realize that Nebraska has more out of state watch sites (where Nebraskans gather to watch football) than USC, Alabama, Texas, and Miami combined? It’s because gobs of us left – there’s no jobs in Nebraska. Farmers are too bloody productive. In that regard, you guys at GI are doing a better job than OWH because they won’t put stuff online. They’ve defined their market as Omaha, the dumb #$)(*##)$’s.
4 – I notice CNN.com keeps putting up more video. I never watch them. Never. Why would I when I could read the story and be less intrusive to people around me at work?
5 – Are you kidding me? 90% of us wouldn’t watch a debate live, and you expect someone to watch it online? Especially now. This election sucks. I don’t care which side you’re on, both sides are evil, despicable dirtbags. If the press covering this election all dropped dead tomorrow and political ads were declared illegal, most of the US would have a party and the recession would be over.
6 – Why would you have a story and a video about the story unless it added to the story? I don’t get that. Maybe if it were “bad accident blows up beef processing plant”, and shots of people running, screaming, explosions. Yeah. That would make sense.
7 – Do newspaper people actually talk to people who aren’t newspaper people?
I am still awaiting a restore on a whole crapload of files. A big part of my life is disaster recovery, fixing blown up stuff, waiting for data. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have written this. I am not a stalker. Ha!
However, I find it interesting following what you’re doing because we’re trying to discover things from two ends of a spectrum. I’m blogging, trying to figure out more media (although I was published for 18 years in the computer industry until I nearly died from chronic dehydration). Besides, it’s kind of fun.
You take care know, ya hear.
I think your questions/lessons apply at major metro newspapers as well. We’re still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I like that you are full of ideas and willing to take chances (the daily news show).
I think Jon Johnston’s arguments are good. Watching video on a work computer is annoying to those around the person watching. Plus, bosses and IT people don’t like it. Considering the vast majority of our traffic comes from people checking us out while at work, I think that’s a valid concern (that people won’t click on video no matter what).
So, if you’re going to do it, keep them very short (I’m starting to become a believer in a very short format (like http://12seconds.tv/) – and keep them extremely relevant. People clicked on snow because everyone wants to see the first snow when they’re stuck at work. People will also click on Nebraska stuff because college football is king in a place like Nebraska.
Steph, what you advocate for video is exactly what we’ve talked about for a long time.
Take a look at The Batavian and our videos … we seem to be getting more views to our video with a smaller audience than your site. Why do you think that is?
Howard – I’ve been paying attention to what you folks at gatehouse think of video
I liked what I was seeing. I will take a look at the Batavian in the morning, thanks for the tip.
Jon – A lot of great points. One thing – the debates we put online were local debates, not the national stuff. I believe we sponsored them, so it was thought we should have video from them online. I also agree that watching vid at work is usually frowned upon. Even if you have headphones, you’re still sucking bandwidth. An interesting dilemma.
Rob: I like the idea of short vids too – maybe with the exception of the sporty stuff. I still want to be a little choosier about what we shoot though.
Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on this post. It was most unexpected and very encouraging to read. I appreciate it.
The difficulty with web news video is that it absolutely, positively doesn’t work out to a positive P&L statement based on a standard CPM page-impression business model. Even if one or two of your pieces go viral every year, it’s not going to be enough to cover the overhead.
Hence: A two-minute video typically represents at least four hours of staff time (a full day is more accurate for a complex, edited video story). Amortize the cost of the camera, the editing station and the software, not to mention the staff training and planning and support, and it’s pretty obvious that you need thousands of hits, not hundreds, for an individual video to be in the black.
Consequently, newspaper companies looking to save money are cuttng their video programs, because they’re losing money.
But here’s the thing: How many of your individual stories would run a positive P&L? What’s your ROI on an individual photo assignment? How much money could you save by cutting back on photographers and giving cheap digitals to reporters?
We don’t view online and print the same way, because people don’t buy individual print stories: They buy the whole package. If we valued each story individually, few would pull their own weight. If we value quality as an overhead expense, then quality becomes expendable. Everything can always be done more cheaply.
So the question becomes, what’s the role of video in the overall value of your website?
I’d write more, but I’m late out the door. Gotta run.
Some more specific tips for getting more out of the video you do now:
* You’re hosting on YouTube, which is good and bad.
Good: Could boost traffic, allows you to social network with viewers, provides public embed code, lets people share your video.
Bad: Crappy codec, poor quality, no choice of player, no monetary value (to you) for embedded plays on other sites or on YouTube itself.
* Depending on your hosting setup, you can get better performance and more money out of enterprise video hosting rather than the free service. If your host charges you for bandwidth, obviously you’ll LOSE money if one of your videos goes viral, but if it’s flat rate (be sure to use a streaming-optimized server), then you won’t be paying extra for success.
* I’m recommending that people consider video sponsorships that would include advertising impressions in your player AND sponsorship promotion inside your rendered video file. So that’s up to three revenue streams right there: Your standard display ads on the video page; a static special ad for the “videos brought to you by” sponsor, and the sponsor info within your rendered file (typically as a watermark or a lower-third title).
* Pre-roll video advertising is popular with sponsors, and I don’t have figures on its effects on viewership. But here’s my observation: People will shut down your video if the pre-roll ad is too long, performs poorly or otherwise ruins the experience. So treat pre-roll cautiously, even if the advertisers are screaming for it. It can harm your brand.
* There are two types of video that people like: Produced videos that tell stories and “targets of opportunity” clips that may be of poor technical quality but are entertaining or alarming or funny or weird. Hence: Your snow clip is an oddity, so people look at it. My suggestion? Don’t confuse the two. If your produced videos have sloppy production values and do a poor job of telling a story, people will learn not to watch them.
The bad trend? Discussions that go like this: “Our produced videos don’t get views and our crappy clips are more popular. So lets quit worrying about quality and do everything on the cheap.” You lose the ability to tell stories in a compelling way (because that’s where the editing comes in) and you start your video brand on a viscious cycle.
* The secret to having more traffic on your low-value clips? Volume. So don’t shoot for one or two low-value clips every day: Shoot for 50. And the way to that is to become the place where people share their videos for your geographic area. How do you manage that? In as automated a way as possible.
* Meanwhile, become more selective about your produced videoes.
What’s the real value of web video on a news site? It boosts the value of the overall site. Unfortunately, your site is traditional in the sense that it places video in a separate section. Break that mold. If you’re going to be paying for staff video, try to integrate it into something that displays above the scroll, something that becomes part of your online identity.
That could mean that there’s a playable video story that you feature right at the top, but that involves so much planning and prep that I question the value of that.
An easier approach? Rather than a produced daily video program, why not set up a camera, sit down in front of it, and say:
“This is Steph with your daily briefing for Tuesday, Oct. 28. Today’s online coverage highlights are Bob’s story on that never-ending cost-overrun scandal at city hall, and the comments section is sure to be hot. We’ve got an exciting video of the Cornhuskers defensive backfield reading the phone book. The hottest comment thread so far is on the middle-school curriculum story. My favorite came from JonasBros1990: “Intelligent Design is a contradiction in terms if you look at the materials these people have suggested.” Keep those comments coming, folks. As always you can reach me by phone (display), email (display) and Twitter (display), or comment on my blog. And your parting-shot submitted-video moment of Zen comes from Billy Bob Jolie of Grand Island, who caught 20 seconds of his dog doing something terribly, terribly wrong. ”
In other words: It’s not the video, it’s the story. It’s not the site, it’s the relationship. It’s not the tools, it’s the possibilities.
Just a word to say “it’s not just you.” We run a small online-only neighborhood news operation and started adding video 13 months ago — just before I left my tv-news job to work on our site fulltime. Video seemed like the thing to do. But as you have experienced, most of the clips get few clicks, and processing it — even if just for a trimmed segment of “raw video,” which is most of what we do — takes a lot more time than it’s worth. In the vein of the person who said “it adds value to your site,” however, I feel you still need to stay in the game. Even if nobody clicks on the video I’m about to upload of various local law-enforcement leaders at a budget forum tonight – I know there is some value for them in knowing we are OFFERING it, in case they ever decided they wanted or needed to see what those leaders have to say. And there also seems to be value in becoming an archive of record for major local events – park dedications, big breaking news stories, mayoral show-and-tell, festivals.
We shoot with cheap commercial camcorders, by the way. A step up from Flip, but not much — a Sony hard-drive and a JVC Everio hard-drive, which even together cost less than $1K.
A thought on why to do video even though not a lot of people watch it:
We in the newspaper game have been told about our unavoidable coming death perpetually for the past decade (all that I’ve been in the business). In these warnings of doom and gloom come the occasional how- to-avoid-the-worst advice. This advice is varied, but usually contains some buzz phrase like thinking outside the box.
What all the advice fails to mention is this: You won’t get an audience the first time you do a video. Come on, do we really think so?
If I build a burger joint on Main St. (or add a feature to the front page of the printed newspaper), everyone will see it. They will eat there and decide whether or not to tell their friends to eat there. (Or read the new feature and buy the paper again, etc.)
It’s easy because everyone already gets the paper. They expect the paper. Main Street is right on everyone’s path.
If I build a gyro stand in the middle of a corn field ten miles outside of town, there is a chance people might not be knocking down the door the first day. It’s unexpected and, while the gyros may be extraordinary, they are off Main Street.
Initially, it’s smarter to make burgers on Main Street than make gyros off the beat path.
But what if those gyros ARE great. And people DO like them. Every person that wanders out to the corn field likes them and tells someone else. And comes back. And soon, it is considered a success.
But if it gets closed down before people truly discover it, then it is considered a failure.
People won’t go to video because you have it. You have to have it for them to go to it over time. And video will take time to catch on. It just will.
That’s why I’m happy to try different things with video. We’ll stumble onto something good. And maybe that dies after a while, but it doesn’t have to last forever. Some other use for video will come along and we’ll latch to that, or create the next video thing to come along.
Quitting is a bad option.
I’m not advocating quitting. I’m just saying, at this point in our video evolution, we need to evaluate what we’re sending our only news/sports videographer out to shoot and make sure we make the best of his time. And look at supplementing what he shoots with UGC, and maybe find a simpler way for our reporters to get video (Flips.) Uh, and analyze what our readers are interested in.
But I would never say give up and quit.