UK: Standard to launch broadband TV portal

Posted by Maddie Hanna on June 21, 2006 at 2:52 PM

In a time when newspapers are struggling to retain advertisers, the UK’s Evening Standard has a different approach: a broadband TV portal that hopes to target the classified advertising market.

The Standard is trialing the service, which will allow users access to on-demand video footage of news stories and user-generated content, on the Cube TV platform. Video classifieds would be broken down into sections like property and entertainment.

It’s an interesting step, although expansion into other forms of media can be difficult. Case in point: the Tribune’s synergy woes after snatching up TV stations in the cities where the company owned major papers. Those stations are struggling.

But broadband is a different story. As John E. Reardon, president of Tribune Broadcasting, told the New York Times, “I think there’s an evolution going on here with broadband, and we haven’t seen it play itself out yet.” Tribune is developing methods to stream live video footage to its newspapers’ Web sites.

Source: Media Week (through Ifra Executive News Service), the New York Times