Station Putting Pre-Empted Show On The Web

Culture

from the for-those-who-want-to-see-it dept

In the linear world of TV, pre-empting a show is a big deal. Back in November, a producer for CBS News was fired for daring to cut into the last four minutes of CSI (during sweeps week) to announce that Yasser Arafat had died — leading to plenty of complaints from angry CSI watchers who apparently aren’t particularly concerned about world politics (at least not during prime time). CBS was forced to re-air the program a few days later. So, it’s interesting to see how some TV stations are figuring out how to deal with the Pope’s funeral. One Florida station has apparently decided that it will pre-empt its normal morning news program from the TV schedule to run the funeral live, but will still offer the news show on the web for those who would prefer to see it that way. While this may lead to questions of just how important the morning news program is to some people, a more interesting question is whether or not people will actually want to watch the program online, instead of on their TV (on the assumption very few people have hooked up their computers to their TV). As the E-Media Tidbits piece linked above suggests, the web and the TV aren’t the same, and the show might be better off chopping up the program, and letting people download just the sections they want to watch. Either way, it’s interesting that at least some TV stations are looking to the web as a way to deal with collisions in scheduling and the fact that they might have more than 24 hours of programming to deal with. With the rise of TiVo, and people watching television at times when it isn’t live — will the pre-empted TV broadcast still make as much sense in the future anyway?