Nature of the beast

This week's shift left little time to breath. Besides what reporters handed me, I did not  time for extra extras, but I did have time to learn the nature of the beast.
In general, TV stations are behind print media in web development. The major factor lies in deadline structures.
Print newsroom often work for days and for larger stories, weeks, in advance. This gives time for the writer to communicate with interactive department on the development of content.
Broadcast newsrooms work day to day, sometimes even often hour to hour. This gives little room for an interactive department to develop in-depth content for the web.
TV news has special super powers, something that print will never have. TV viewers are more likely to multi-task while consuming media. According to eMarketer, in 2006, 102.6 million adult internet users also watched tv while going online.
WHOA! WHOA! HO! HO! Stop the presses! 102.6 million! What are we doing here people? Why are we not paying more attention to not only 102.6 million, but a 102.6 million which is a captive audience?
Imagine this. Scenario 1: John reads an article in the newspaper, sees a tease for a web extra in print, tears it out and shoves it in his pocket to view later. Scenario 2: Jane is watching TV and she see a plug for more content on the web. In a heighten emotional state of fear, she thinks, "If I don't visit now, then this opportunity will be lost forever." Jane then visits the site. As for John, he never made it to the site, because next time he sees the web tease he tore out, it is shriveled up and dried out, because it just came out of the drier.

Media companies need to turn away from the convenience of creating web content for their print outlets and start pushing resources towards their TV stations. On the station level, web departments need to start developing applications that process content can be packaged under tight deadlines, because that is the nature of the beast.

Image sources:
"Internet's impact chart" was taken from Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists published by the Pew Research Center.
"US Adult Internet Users Who Use Other Media While Going Online, 2006 (millions)" was taken from Two-Thirds of Internet Users Watch TV While Surfing the Net published by eMarketer.