Streaming Internet video goes mainstream after US attacks

Sue Zeidler in Los Angeles

Video on the Internet has emerged as a critical conduit of news about last week’s devastating attacks on the United States, bringing a fringe medium closer to the mainstream and making it a more serious competitor to television, broadcasters and experts said.

Viewership for video news over the Web has been unprecedented, with many people apparently tuning in from offices and other locations around the world where television coverage of the air attacks on New York and Washington was unavailable, broadcasters said.

“This has been a watershed for the Internet because there is an unquenchable thirst for news and the networks are more or less providing the same story,” said Thomas Plate, professor of policy and communication studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

“To get a different dimension of detail you can now get to Web pages of foreign newspapers and get a different perspective and see, for instance, what Pakistanis are saying,” he said.

Many news companies have viewed video streaming on the Internet—which still cannot match the visual quality of traditional TV—as a small bet on the future audiences that more widespread adoption of broadband, or high-speed Web access would deliver. But the amount of video streamed during last week’s horrific attacks and afterward show those who already have high-speed access are using it to watch more video on their computers—sometimes as a substitute for television, broadcasters said.

That trend was most visible outside the United States, and beyond the broadcast footprint of the US Networks.

Most leading European newspapers, for example, have offered streaming video and flash graphics on their Websites. France’s Le Monde newspaper, which offered syndicated ABC footage on its site, said the news coverage of the disaster represented a breakthrough for the Web. “For the first time the Internet was part of the media of an event,” online editor Bruno Patino told Reuters.

Sweden’s Kamera said since last week it has added over half a dozen new customers to its client base of some 100 portals and news sites.
“It was an enormous day for video. The numbers were extraordinary,” said Peter Dorogoff, director of communications for MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft Corp and General Electric Co’s NBC television network.

Dorogoff said the MSNBC news site (http//:www.msnbc.com) served over 12.5 million video feeds on September 11, the day that four commercial airliners were hijacked and three were used to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania. The trend toward high viewership has continued in the days since, a harbinger of an emerging trend, experts said.

“It seems to me the computer screen will be more like a television, except you will be able to dictate the program and the time you want to watch it. I think it will affect the time people will spend watching television,” Prof Plate said.

“It’s not going to eliminate television, because some people like the passive nature of TV, but viewers are basically prisoners of the networks and can see only what networks want to show them. Computers require a more proactive investment of the psyche. The Net is moving to empower people,” he said.

— Reuters