This seems like a spectacularly bad idea. While video is certainly important in showing sports highlights, most of the web content doesn’t need to be video. I’d much prefer a written story 95% of the time.
Of course, I read sports sites mainly at slow times at work or else on my phone while commuting by train to work.
Trades in baseball, analysis of the NBA draft, Qatar World Cup corruption, and Michael Floyd’s DUI trial are just 4 random stories I’m glancing at right now, none of which would benefit from video.
Sinking a putt in golf? A great defensive play in baseball? A crazy Formula One finish? Sure, give me the option to click on a video.
Thankfully Fox Sports was petty much my least preferred sports website, so this won’t affect me too much. I still hope the experiment fails.
I’m onboard with this rant for exactly this reason. I can read much faster than than most people can speak intelligibly. Also, I don’t have to rewind to re-read.
As an experiment, I timed myself reading the linked article in the OP and reading it out loud in my best newscaster voice. Reading it took about 1 minute. Saying it took about 3 minutes.
I’ll take reading for ⅓ the time and all the info, thanks.
I heard on Colin Cowherd yesterday that Fox Sports cut almost all of its writing staff. I guess that’s why. I agree the format is not attractive, but I never go to their website anyway.
That’s a weird use of the word “digital” especially since it’s opposite to the way the word is used in the linked article (in itself an odd usage): “Which means that many of the people who are hired to sell advertisements are focusing more on selling video ads than on selling digital ads.”
I’m with you, except for seeing actual highlights, I always prefer reading a written article to watching a video.
Unfortunately it’s just much quicker (and therefore likely cheaper) to put together a quick video of someone talking instead of having them write a full article. Same thing applies to doing a Youtube video instead of writing a long, well thought-out blog post.
I virtually never click into videos either, even on sites I like. (Unless I can be assured of seeing cute cats/dogs.) I can read a story much faster than it takes to watch a video. And videos seem to take forever to get to the point.
But now no one will ever need to learn to read (or write) again! Win-win. Betsy De Vos will be happy.
Any time I see that a story I click on is just a video, I exit out. And I hate that every site now has an auto-played video accompanying every stinking print story. Humbug, I say!
Really? I find the opposite. If I have to speak something, I’m going to want to write a script first, to keep my thoughts organized, because if I realize at the end that there’s something else I meant to say, it’s easier to edit it in in writing than to say “Oh, by the way” at the end (or, longer yet, editing it into the video). And if I’m going to be creating that script anyway, why not make the script itself the thing I put online?