Online Video Disappoints

Online video. Thank goodness we’ve got so much of it to watch. Videos are everywhere today. So much so that in many cases site publishers are pushing video over regular text pages. For consumers, this makes it more difficult to get information; I mean good information, quickly. Most videos are really not worth the wait. For example, the network news and TV sites are slow to load. They require users to suffer through boring pre-roll commercials, which are usually not produced to be pre-roll at all. Many are just cut downs of :30 TV spots which in many cases fail to deliver the goods. And if you pursue more than one video on a site’s page, you are very likely to see the same pre-roll ad. Oh boy! And the videos themselves are just underwhelming. Boring or uninspiring content isn’t any better in a video than in text. It’s worse because you had to wait for it. The copywriters who develop clever headlines describing the videos are continually over-promising. When given the choice, I’d much rather consume content in text format than through a video clip pulled from broadcast. For others like me, the use of online video is really becoming more like the use of regular television. When I want to sit back and be entertained, I embrace online video on sites like YouTube. When I’m leading forward looking for information, I skip videos entirely. What used to differentiate the television experience (entertainment) from the online experience (information) years ago is now segmenting online behavior in similar ways. We’re being trained to avoid online video because it just ain’t that good.

 

Sick of Lou Dobbs

I’ve got XM Radio in my Chevy Tahoe and i listen to CNN quite a bit. It’s really remarkable what a rerun Lou Dobbs is. Every night he does his little intro for his evening show, often during Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room”. And every night he talks about the same thing; border security. If its not our ports its the Mexican border. He slams congress and the president and uses really big meaningful words to express his disgust that no one is doing anything about protecting our borders. Such passion and enthusiasm.

Such a bore.

No one gives a crap about what Lou Dobbs thinks. He’s just another blathering bobble head voice in an already over done media market. He should get with the program. He’s been blathering about the same topic for over a year and no one is doing anything in reaction to his blathering. That means he’s not having any impact on policy or opinion at all.

So, i am please that my XM radio gives me a gazillion choices. I guess all the policy makers in DC tune him out too. And i am even more than pleased that CNN moved Lou’s show back one hour.

 

TV Needs A Howard Schultz

I spent a lot of time reading and watching TV while I was at home nursing a lower back problem. Besides getting hooked on Primetime in the Daytime on TNT, I really got into some of the programming on Discovery and the History Channel.

One of the more interesting programs I watched was about coffee. An entire program about the origins of coffee and how it has changed the world. I was struck by the obviousness of the problem we had but didn’t see; that we had all been drinking “swill” coffee. Howard Schultz saw this and started on his way to stardom with Starbucks. What he did for great tasting coffee and socializing is remarkable. He basically revolutionized coffee drinking and consumers are much better off because of it.

Network and Cable TV need a Howard Schultz.  Why? Because the user experience with TV today sucks.  Most of the programming is garbage. And the commercial clutter is utterly insulting. Someone needs to swoop in and fiz the model, and I don’t have much confidence it will come from anyone inside the industry today.

When you have a bad back, bad TV is really a pain in the back!