Shifting our News to New Media

ABC Nightly news with Brian Williams is a program that millions tune into across the country as a source for what’s going on in the nation and the world on a regular basis. I personally have replaced watching the news on TV with reading it online or watching little clips here and there on the internet. It works with my schedule, I get to watch/read whenever I want and don’t have to deal with (many) commercials.

After spending time with my grandfather during break, who tunes in on a nightly basis, I saw how little has changed about the nightly broadcast. There was one major thing that I have never seen before though that caught my eye. At the end of the broadcast while the credits rolled, they had four icons across the bottom under the words “To get this broadcast”. The Facebook “F”, the Twitter “T”, the RSS squiggles, and the Podcast “i” icon are all there popping out like candy on the screen in their colorful “shorthand” icons.

ABC has recognized that in the modern day, many people either have converted to digital/internet media for collecting their information and they really don’t want to miss out. If you had told them five years ago that to keep their following they would have to convert their broadcast into four different electronic versions, they would probably tell you you’re crazy and that everybody following them watches TV. Now, they have stayed up with the latest and turned a half hour TV show into many other forms of communication.

How you condense that into 140 characters or a wall post… I’m not sure but, they have found ways of making it work to get their program to the masses. I think that it is interesting also that you see it at the end of the broadcast. They don’t put it in the beginning saying if you don’t want to watch this whole thing or don’t want the commercials then look at our online sources for giving you the news. It is only after the broadcast is over that they advertise other possible ways. It would be interesting to see how the five different ways of collecting their news are different and what is cut out in certain ones.

Life on the run is always shifting and thankfully, industries are noticing that and tailoring their products to help go along seamlessly with the shift. I’m sure that the daily commuter appreciates being able to bring up the highlights of the newscast on their blackberry from the same firsthand source that they would have gotten the information from on TV.

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