Moving Online: TV News and the Internet Sonya Duhe’, Ph.D. Andrea Tanner, Ph.D. and Karen Zatkulak University of South Carolina, Columbia

GROWTH OF WEB SITES  1990s: Use of Internet doubled every year (Bucy 2002)  2001: An average 4.6 million people a day visited CNN.com during the first week of the Sept. 11 attacks (Pastore, 2000)  2004: Local TV new directors said Web is #1 choice for convergent TV news operations (Duhe’, Mortimer, Chow 2004)  2005: 96% of all local TV stations had a Web site (RTNDA, 2005)

PURPOSE OF STUDY To provide a snapshot of what U.S. TV stations are putting on the “splash” (front pages only) of their web sites including:  Types of news stories  Featured areas, i.e., weather, health, science  Use of ads on the sites and station promotion

METHODOLOGY  Content analysis of sample of 140 local TV Web sites (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX)  Large market stations 1-50 Medium to small markets  Web sites came from the master station index at TVjobs.com

ADVERTISING  91% had ads  87% had a banner across the top of their TV news front page to promo the station  86% displayed their station logo or graphic within the banner  58% of the banners pictured on-air talent

INTERACTIVE  Nearly 46% of the sites were interactive, allowing viewers to offer story ideas, send in pictures, or participate in a poll  74% of the sites did not refer back to the TV station’s newscasts

BANNERS  87% had a banner across the top page  86% of the banners displayed the station logo or graphic  58% of the sites pictured on-air personalities

TOP STORIES  Defined as the top 2-3 featured stories on the site  Majority of all top stories were crime  Most of the crime stories had no pictures, video or graphic  Majority of crime stories linked to another site

STORY TOPIC  38% of the sites had a section for local stories  38 % had a section for national stories  26% had a section for international stories

WEATHER IS IMPORTANT 76% of sites had a weather section; of those 61 had a weather image or map; 67% carried current weather conditions

HEALTH AND SCIENCE  Nearly 20 % of sites had a health or medical section  6% had a science section

SUMMARY  76% of sites had weather on splash page;  Crime stories were the most popular stories on the front page  Almost half of the sites were interactive, an avenue for feedback that TV doesn’t allow  But nearly three out of four sites aren’t referring back to the TV newscasts, thereby missing an opportunity to cross promote