Newshub and TVNZ both have an obviously huge reservoir of video, dating back decades, but both the Stuff and NZ Herald websites now also have substantial video teams, producing huge amounts of content every day, and getting some really nice readership numbers out of it. Even crusty old Radio NZ has started dipping its wrinkly 92-year-old toe into the vast ocean of video production, with 90 minutes of Checkpoint with pictures coming out every weekday, and all sorts of live streams and special projects, like that Ninth Floor series (which will now be played on TV3).
The allure of video content is easy to understand - good visuals can make or break a story, and there is a big audience just waiting to make some video go viral, racking up phenomenal numbers, even in a small country like NZ. It shows that a website is modern and up to date, and, most notably, they can prove incredibly valuable revenue streams, with auto-playing ads at the start of every video providing eyeball money that has migrated away from the telly.
But in the quest to get more moving pictures on their websites, many of them can overdo it, and put up video of any bloody thing, even if it really doesn't warrant it. Some sites get bogged down with endless live streams of dull press conferences that are over before they can get an audience, and don't provide any information that couldn't be summerised in a quick paragraph.
(A small aside - it's actually quite funny how reporters are learning real fast that they need to shut the hell up before a press conference starts, because those live streams can be going out before anything is actually happening, and Joe Public can hear you making daft jokes with your mates while waiting to report on a tragic event.)
Of course, the sense of video overload is not helped by the cursed autoplay function, where you drop into a story and are halfway down the page when Mike Hosking or Tony Veitch starts talking to you, and you have to scramble to shut them the fuck up before you lose any more brain cells. This is a particular pain in the arse when you're surfing the news sites late at night, and the speakers blare into life in the dark silence.
There are also some fundamental problems with the idea that everybody wants video, which is only exasperated by the autoplay malarkey. Video might seem like the easy option for lazy consumers - why waste the brainpower on actually reading a story when it can be read out to you - but it actually takes a lot longer to watch a video report than it does to read a few paragraphs, and it becomes a lot harder for a sneaky view of something while at work.
There can also be serious issues with archiving: trying to find a story on the TV networks ' websites that is older than 18 months can prove frustrating and pointless, as they're lost between website revamps, or just in the interests of clearing up some server space.
But the rush to video is unlikely to slow down anytime soon. The Herald Focus experiment has been consistently talked up by its parent company, and has won some strong awards recently, (although it should also be noted that these types of things still happen 10 minutes before they get shit-canned.)
And in this age of ubiquitous smart-phone technology, it is easy to get a lot of video from punters out there on their phone, hot from an ongoing event. leading to some remarkable imagery that can be inadvertently iconic.
These amateur videographers can also produce stuff that is barely watchable, and people still persist in filming in bloody portrait mode. But this does make the good stuff stand out, and shows that producing stuff at the level of the big TV news channels is fucking hard work, while having the tech support to make sure it doesn't go down whenever some munter clicks on it is also tough as shit.
Despite the promises of many headlines, video hasn't killed the radio star - radio without pictures remains the most robust sector of the media market. But you can expect more and more autoplaying video to shock you out of your media stupor, because it's all about keeping the eyes on the screen.
- Katherine Grant
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