I have thought this several times recently, but I thought I would solicit an opinion. Does it bother you when a web site as large as CNN has news stories on the front page that are only available as video?
This is today’s CNN page “above the fold”:
Green indicates images and ads, which are fine and understandable, red indicates video only content. Judging off the cuff, that means that viewing the front page only what, 30% is readable news content. I don’t mind videos as alternate content, but there were several news stories I wanted to scan that were video only. Scanning an article for anything interesting in 5-10 seconds is much better than having to watch a 4 minute video clip to get the point.
Not to toot my employer’s horn too much, but look at this in contrast to MSNBC.com
So the alternative here is 5 stories that are available as video alternate content, and one single video only story.
I guess I should have went to MSNBC.com first.
Tweet
I am so glad I am not the only one who has thought this! Why CNN insists on doing this I do not know. It just makes me Google the news story and read it elsewhere.
Thank you.
Totally agree… I have actually switched to msnbc.com because of this very reason.
You should know the answers to these questions. Being the statmonger that you are, you should know that video content is going to make several things happen. First of all, it’s going to increase visit lengths to the website. It also provides an avenue for ‘must watch’ advertising. When a viewer starts a video, there will often be a short advertisement at the beginning that must be viewed before the actual content is provided. That’s expensive real estate
The visit length stats also provide the source (ie: CNN) with the ammunition to elevate their advertising rates. Simple economics 