LV, national broadcasters put content on Internet

Tuesday, April 11, 2000 | 11:04 a.m.

Las Vegas media companies are confronting technological challenges facing the broadcast industry, a local television executive says.

Dick Fraim, general manager of KLAS Channel 8, the CBS affiliate serving the Las Vegas market, said his station and others serving Southern Nevada are finding ways to use their broadcast content in new ways.

"We're learning new ways to put our product on the Internet," Fraim said. "Some stations are looking at videostreaming weather forecasts and sports scores."

Videostreaming allows a computer user to click on an icon or a button on a website and start an audio and video program. Viewers can see a single story from a newscast, including all the pictures, voiceovers and music.

Fraim said Channel 8 already is working with videostreaming some stories from its newscasts.

Finding creative ways to blend broadcast with the Internet was advocated by two speakers at Monday's start of the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

About 115,000 people are attending the show, which continues through Thursday at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton, the Sands Expo Center and the Venetian hotel-casino.

Eddie Fritts, president and chief executive officer of the NAB, and Sumner Redstone, chairman and chief executive officer of Viacom Inc., addressed industry convergence issues in the opening session, urging broadcasters to become partners with Internet companies instead of being overwhelmed by them.

Redstone, whose company is in the process of acquiring CBS, said broadcasters have a commodity that dot-com companies need -- content.

"To me, CBS stands not just for the Columbia Broadcasting System," Redstone said. "CBS: content, brands, share. This is the broadcast advantage: unparalleled content, unbeatable brand strength and unmatched opportunities for winning a disproportionate share of the world's growing appetite for information and entertainment."

"The fact of the matter is," added Fritts, "that the Internet is changing most industries, not just broadcasting, so we are not alone in facing such a future. But I've always liked something that Alexander Graham Bell said, 'Sometimes we stare so long at the door that is closing we don't see the one that is opening.' "

Fraim, whose station on Thursday began broadcasting a high-definition television signal -- a first in Southern Nevada -- on Channel 7, said digital signals will provide new opportunities for television stations that his company and others in Southern Nevada will explore as the technology develops.

"The width of the signal gives us the capability to produce four or five additional channels," Fraim said. "Right now, we're broadcasting a high-definition picture, but there are options that I'm sure we'll explore."

Among the possibilities: wireless Internet connections, distributing additional content or the possibility of selling a piece of the spectrum to another content provider.

Fraim said the marriage of broadcast with the Internet is apparent at vegas.com, a company operated by the Greenspun family, which owns the Las Vegas Sun. He said the family's interest in developing a television network dedicated to Las Vegas and the company's participation in the Entertainment Development Corporation of Las Vegas are examples of how content can be developed for broadcast and online users.

The EDC, a nonprofit organization, is attempting to lure Hollywood business to Las Vegas.

A survey introduced Monday afternoon at NAB also indicates that Internet users have an appetite for broadcast content.

The survey, "A View of the 21st Century News Consumer," released by Zatso Inc., a San Francisco company dedicated to extending broadcast company brands to the Internet, says 73 percent of online users want "news on demand" and 65 percent want personalized news.

"News on demand" gives Internet users the ability to watch news clips from an index of available broadcast stories and "personalized news" is information of particular interest to an individual computer user.

The Zatso survey, undertaken by Frank N. Magid Associates from Feb. 28 to March 6, was based on telephone interviews of 1,024 adults called at random. The statistical margin of error is 3.1 percent.

The survey also said if consumers had the ability to skip over items in a newscast, 57 percent said they would pass by stories about sex scandals, 41 percent would bypass sports, 34 percent would skip political news, 33 percent would pass by business news and 32 percent would skip entertainment news.

Fewer people said they would skip past general crime stories, human-interest stories, international news and violent crime stories.

The survey also said 58 percent of the respondents said they would make better decisions than editors about selecting news that would interest them.