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.