Dear CNET, You’re Doing it Wrong
Great review over on NewTeeVee of CNET’s latest video offering, Loaded. Sounds like they’ve made a classic mistake by trying to serve too many audiences they have missed them all.
“I can’t figure out who exactly the show is targeted at. Is it for the noob or the tech-savvy? Loaded is basically just someone reading the headlines and lead paragraphs of stories from a handful of reputable tech blogs. The problem is that the tech-savvy already read those tech blogs and get much more analysis than is offered on Loaded. So rundowns of tech news headlines quickly become redundant.
If the show is after the noob, it gets into some pretty obscure stuff — like 700 MHz purchases that mean little to someone just coming into the tech world — and because it’s video, there are no links to provide outside context. And in what is an egregious sin in the modern video world, CNET doesn’t allow embedding, so videos can’t be spread to new audiences. Non-techie people must tune in to the all-techie CNET.”
Though they claim this isn’t a death-knell for Loaded, I can’t imagine this sort of show can make any significant impact.
February 13, 2008 4:55 pm 
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