Hate em. Glad I’m not the only one.
I hate them too.
I think it may have to do with the fact that many media outlets were slammed in the early days of the Internet for being dinosaurs and not utilizing all the Internet had to offer-- sights, sounds, interaction, etc. Now they’ve swung too far in the other direction with the videos.
Yahoo’s especially bad, I think. They have actual mini “shows” with talking heads and hosts yammering on about some vapid entertainment story that I really didn’t want to invest more than 5 seconds of skimming on. But they’re going to make me sit through a 5 minute video? I don’t think so.
I also can’t stand them and refuse to watch them.
Another hater here.
Even more annoying is the misdirection tactics they often use.
The headline of the article will be, “Scientific Breakthrough With Anti-Gravity!” and you click, see no text and have to watch some stupid video clip - and then the video clip has the ad, then gets to the story of a smiling newscaster showing a kitten that is supposedly floating in mid-air and is then shown to be standing on a piece of glass on a bookshelf.
My, my…isn’t that cute and a total waste of my time to have even bothered to look.
I hate them as well, but for a different reason. I only get 250mb a day of bandwidth. So if there’s a story that interests me but is only available as a video, I can’t get the information unless I take the extra time to try and find a non-video source.
Add my name to the hate list; I don’t want to spend 5 minutes listening to some idiot talking head discuss a story, I want to spend 30 seconds reading the actual story and then either looking for more info or getting on with my life.
In fact, “informational” videos in general annoy me. I’d rather have a written walkthrough for a game than spend forever sifting through tons of youtube video walkthroughs. Even most “how to” Youtube videos piss me off, because you could just say “Take out the six screws with a philip’s head screwdriver” - I don’t bloody well need to watch you do it.
Yay I’m not alone in my hatred!
Hate them. Don’t have much else to add to the manifold reasons to hate them, but I will say that I invariable look elsewhere for news when I encounter video-only stories.
Unless we’re talking about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report, natch.
Signing onto the Hate List.
I do the same thing!
Technically, CNN is a TV station. They’re doing you a “favor” by bothering to translate their video stories into written words. In fact, if the technology had been available from the start, I wouldn’t be surprised if the CNN website wouldn’t have been all video clips from the beginning. Seems to me they’d be much easier to handle.
I hate them. They suck up too much time and too much bandwidth for the level of content delivered, and I’m often online is settings (like work) where watching videos is inappropriate.
I hate them, too. It would be okay if they were clearly labeled as such but I hate getting suckered into a video and the inevitable ad.
I love them! I really think they’re fantastic, especially at work!
Nah! I hate them too.
Me no like video news stories too.
Is it a way to link to advertising, and thus get sponsors to offset website costs?
I think it’s a way to more seemlessly link to video advertising which probably commands a premium over static or gifs. Plus they’re probably harder (impossible?) to block with software if they’re embedded into the video.
I guess I have to be the first to say I hate them. Terrible things.
when it is video only it should be signified on the link that it is. it should not be autoplay.
I am really surprised so many people hate them. I thought I was just being ridiculously impatient as always. I liked to get most of my news from seattletimes.com since they don’t have any of that, but now they just switched to requiring you to pay for a subscription 
Makes me reach for my gun. :mad: