Matt Sokoloff’s New York Program Blog

Here are some of my favorite news bloopers on YouTube…
Not quite sure that is traffic
There is nothing worse than playing the wrong video for a VO…especially this VO
Are they really the best thing for a funeral?
Gay people can’t climb!!
And my favorite…Shepard Smith wants to give J Lo a…well, just watch for yourself.
UPDATE: My friend Ben reminded me of the ever so famous “boom goes the dynamite” clip and that ESPN’s Page 2 had a nice story on some YouTube clips.

It’s not often I get fired up over something (really….that often, ok) but today I had to. My friend works at News 12 on Long Island. They are the local 24-hour news network for LI owned by Rainbow Media (owned by Cablevision). I wanted to go to their website News12.com to see what they are all about. When I go there I was pleased with the local news from all across the tri-state area. That was until I tried clicking on a headline or a specific area. That was when I was greeted with a screen that wanted to know if I was a local subscriber or if I wanted to pay $4.95 a month or $48 a year for access to their site. I tried to tell them I am a subscriber but they wanted all sorts of information that I did not have.
There are two things wrong with this. One, why are you charging for you site (of which I hear isn’t that great)? No one wants to pay for news that they can get for free elsewhere. Do you have something that the other local stations don’t have? If you do you better tell me more then just “Check out News 12 dotcom (thanks for spelling out dotcom) for breaking news, your local weather, what’s to do, (it that grammatically correct…what is to do) movie clock (now I’m excited), “Sound Off!” board, sports, business center and lots more!” Two, those that are the subscribers probably don’t want to have to log in every time the want to check the “movie clock.” Just my thoughts.

I came across this in one of my old blogs. This post was dated December 5, 2005. It’s always interesting to look back.

WNT’s leap towards the future of News

Today ABC News announced that Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff are being named as the next co-anchors of ABC’s World News Tonight. While I am quite excited about the idea of an MU grad anchoring the evening newscast for one of the big three there are many more important features to this announcement. ABC is willing to look at their product in a different light.

Typically most newsrooms (national and local) had one product, their newscast. Yes, in local news you may have more than one newscast throughout the day, but that was still your only product. As the internet continues to play a larger role in news, newsrooms across the county have copied their newscast to a website. While I have not doubt that ABC still views WNT as the main product they are not afraid to let their website play a vital role in that product. They will doing everything from placing reporters stories on the website before the newscast to expanded coverage of their stories online.

There is nothing worse than newsrooms regurgitating their scripts and packages on the internet. I am glad to see that WNT is going beyond that. It will be interesting to see how their website and blog will compare and compete with NBC’s Night News’.

Today Julie and I went to see letterman. It was for a taping of Fridays show. No need to tivo it, we weren’t on at all. We did have good seats; third row on the side. It was lots of fun. Tom Brokaw was on and talked about all the comedic stuff that he always talks about…you know poverty and global warming.

This evening I went to see the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee , what a hit. You sit outside the theater and read all of the quotes from the critics…and you say “can this show really be that good?” Rather than me giving you a creative quote about spelling H-I-T or the “sweet spell of success” I’ll just say “yes it really is that good.” I went 2hrs before the show to try to get the lottery tickets. But I didn’t win so I just bought standing room only tickets for $25 the show runs 1:45 with no intermission so it wasn’t that bad, and it was well worth it. When you are watching it you forget that it is a musical and feel like it is a comedy show. If you are going to be in NYC, Chicago or San Francisco it is a must see.

I always thought it would be fun to live in a model home. Everything is just perfect. Well in one model home prospective buyers are not only greeted by the perfect interior decorating but also the perfect family. Click here for the story from the NYTimes.

Tonight Show’s Ross Matthews (yes just a reverse of my name) visited Orlando and did the weather forecast for WESH-TV. Click here to watch on YouTube.

As some of you know, for quite some time I have owned MattSokoloff.com. All I pay is a bargain price of $8.95 a year from godaddy.com. I have recommended this to many people. I host my website on MU’s Bengal server for free (If you don’t have access to a free server you can find one online for little to no cost). Recently Google has expanded their service to allow you to host your on domain. So for example I now have Matt@MattSokoloff.com. And the best part about it, is that it is free and it uses gmail’s great online interface. To sign up click here.

In my previous posts I have made mention to the idea of not using AOL. Well if that is what you decide hopefully you will have more luck than Vincent Ferrari. Click here for the story.

This story ran on Tuesday's World News Now podcast and World News Tonight. It is a fun story worth watching. Click here to watch.