Explaining NECN.com

Published Jan 02 2008, 09:19 PM by Adam Reilly

Used to be, you had to head over to Boston.com to get your New England Cable News content. But no longer: as of yesterday, NECN has its very own web site. (Thanks to Universal Hub for clueing me in.)

Don't think, though, that this means NECN and Boston.com are splitsville. The former will still be providing news-video content for the later. What has changed, though, is that NECN is now disseminating its own content online as well, instead of just relying on Boston.com to handle the job.

"Any major media outlet--which we like to consider ourselves--has to view content as a kind of fungible commodity that can be distributed on multiple platforms," says Charlie Kravetz, NECN's VP of News. "Clearly, our core platform is our television network. But every television news organization is also coming to realize that the internet is hugely important."

The first thing you'll notice at NECN.com is the big-ass video player (which, for what it's worth, is far heftier than the players used by other local TV stations). According to Kravetz, this player should require virtually no buffering, which would be a welcome change. Kravetz also promises that NECN.com will be rolling out a "very big blog component" over the next few weeks, complete with RSS feeds.

Sounds good--but for now, the site remains a work in progress. Click on the "NECN Shows" tab, for example, and you get...the NECN.com front page. The search function also seems a bit off: "Deval Patrick" only yields four results, which just can't be right. Then again, since the site is all of one day old, a few glitches are probably to be expected. Check back in a few weeks.