USA Today Weekly Listings Point Out the Best Online Video
What to watch, what to watch? For online videos, it's an even harder question than with broadcast TV. With so many sites offering original and premium programming, even dedicated online viewers can feel overwhelmed. To help out, USA Today has begun a new offering: a weekly print and online listing called "TV on the Web."
USA Today's listings are hand-selected by editors and span all popular categories, including animation, comedy, drama, entertainment, tech and gaming, and family. They focus on web series, rather than viral video hits.
Visitors first encounter a top picks page showing nine current videos. Our only complaint is that the pages aren't user-friendly at first glance: visitors need to mouse over the images to get descriptions for each show. The listings pages would be more helpful if they showed short descriptions automatically, so that visitors can scan the selections and make a choice.
"With celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Jerry Seinfeld entering the web-only space, and alternative programming sites such as YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix carrying exclusive programming, the time has come to reflect the changing media landscape. This is the natural evolution of where TV programming is headed and USA Today is at the forefront," says Larry Kramer, president and publisher of USA Today.