I understand that the web is constantly evolving and as we get more available bandwidth we will get more video and flash based sites. What i really loathe is news sites who have some stories in and only in video format. I mean wtf. I want to read the story at least offer both not just one. That way i dont have to sit through the stupid buffering time watching ads on a little 320x320 screen watching their pixelated faces say stupid jokes after they told me about a molasses trust tipping over oh the I-5. “That sounds like a sticky situation Jon” and then giggle like a little girl. Ahh i miss the days of text. Dont get me wrong i do not claim to be a book person by any means I just do not like online video for anything other then porn or pure pwned videos.
I agree. Some of us work at companies with limited/restricted bandwidth. I for one cannot get any streaming video at work. I regularly chide CNN.com for becoming a video content provider. Pretty soon, all they’ll have are hyperlinks to videos. On that day I’ll say bye-bye CNN.com.
Gah. Take a look at CNNs US news some time.
9 “Top U.S. Stories” - 1 video (that must be an all time low) and 3 lines to other sites. Now scroll down to the regional news. Every single link is to some news stations website. CNN apparently doesn’t collect any of it’s own US news. (And what happened to listing what city or state the news is from? All you get now is KCTV. Where the heck is KCTV?)
I’ve already said bye-bye to CNN.
I hate these too…if I click a news story I’m interested in and find out it’s a video, I won’t even watch it. I can read a heck of a lot faster than watching the loading, precommercials, intro music, banter, FINALLY the story and then the postcommercial.
I agree - even my beloved BBC does this now.
6thed! Hate, hate, hate. I usually type the headline in google and find a text version of the story somewhere else.
Preach it. I hate that crap.
Also, I’ve noticed that the video-only stories are invariably of a very dramatic, weird or sexual nature (or all three). And, damnit, I want to be able to read about that stuff at work!
As far as I’m concerned the only justification for online video news is if it’s being read by nude women. Otherwise, give me text.
Kansas City.
Yep, give me the text. The videos just waste my time. Like Shayna, I’ll just do a search for the story on another site and skip CNN’s video.
Is there some reason that this is a worldwide thing? I usually go to BBC, CNN, The Age (Melbourne newspaper) most frequently for news. All three websites are doing this. My friend says that French news websites are doing it now too.
I hate the video trend as well. Not only is it irritating to have to wait through the loading times (not to mention all the hitches and freezes), but video segments always have far less informational content. All you get is an outline of the story (usually from some toolish local affiliate team) and some irrelevant pictures (“Here’s the outside of the courthouse where something newsworthy took place today”). You can only get fleshed out, useful stories from text.
I guess these outlets think that people are too lazy or stupid to want to read text news anymore and will only click on pictures. I suppose it’s also easier to post content from local affiliates than to actually write original stories anymore.
My guess is that it’s a money-maker for news sites, which profit from getting you to watch a video that is accompanied by an ad of some sort.
Bear in mind that the news sites noted are TV networks - i.e. video news delivery organizations. It’s probably a lot easier for them to just post a video copy of their original broadcast than to transcribe the news to text for minor stories. My rule of thumb is that if it’s a video-only story, it’s probably not worth knowing about.
I agree. I usually try to read the news from school where none of the computers have speakers, and I hate the ‘video-only’ stories. Plus, I’d much rather read a story than watch people sitting behind a desk yak for a few minutes and then get to the story.
Actually, that’s all CNN’s video does on my machine: skip and stutter. I don’t get it. If a couple guys can start up YouTube out of their garage and give me smooth streaming video, why can’t a media goliath like CNN?
Count me in on hating it, too. I see a link to an interesting story I can quickly read while waiting on hold on the phone, and so often it’ll be a video link only. If I wanted TV news, I’d watch TV. Most of the time, I skim a news website to quickly read the news.
If I’m stuck watching the video news, I damn well want it to be in a Flash player. Firefox and Windows Media Player aren’t friends, CNN! Seriously, the Flash plugin behaves in every major web browser and is much less bulky than WMP or Quicktime.
No speakers at work; home computer is in the room where we watch TV. So on-line video news stories are virtually useless. Does anyone know a news site that has minimal (or no) video stories?
I hate video on news sites, too. I don’t have speakers on my computer at work, and I usually turn the speakers down when I’m surfing the web at home to avoid the sound that some ads seem to feel the need to have. I prefer reading text to watching video, too, because I can read text at my own pace, go back and re-read something if I’ve forgotten it or wasn’t paying attention, and so on.
Video news are completely inaccessible to me. 
I for one will add to this pitting.