But the two good pages have gone, and now we have a new combined CBS/KOTV web page, and I am very disappointed. They took two good things, mixed them together, and the result is a bad thing. I hate the use of frames (I feel the pseudo frames used by KJRH (http://www.teamtulsa.com/) and ABC are much better. I don't know what the
<!- accessing procedure wildcard 12/17 ->
<!- accessing wildcard 1 ->
<!- wildcard owner:KOTV->
<!- Printing wildcard Story Id:73487 ->
v!- Printing wildcard 1 ->
stuff is that they use, other than it looks like some sort of SSI (server side includes) but it must have bugs, because my browser will lock up for 10 to 20 seconds every so often, when it does not on any other site, etc. It could be just that the pages are apparently coming from both the local KOTV server and the network server, but if so it proves my point: "When I go to CBS.COM I am looking for network stuff, and a simple link to KOTV.COM would be more than enough (with a drop down box, if I don't have a cookie that says what my local station is), and when I go to KOTV.COM, I am looking for local stuff, and a simple link to CBS.COM would be perfect. In the extremely rare instance where I want to know something about both, I can easily go to both sites." They have taken the approach that viewers of their web page should have both local and national news in one place, and they seem willing to delay people who know what they want, just so they can show them they have the other stuff available as well.

The only bad thing they did not do, that NBC did do, is that annoying horoscope that pops up in its own window, and NBC must have gotten complaints, because they seem to have eliminated it now.

KOTV provide a list of email addresses of key executives; I am not sure whether they read their email or not, but they sure don't answer it. While preparing to write this article I left a email message describing my dissatisfaction to four different people:

David Oldham - KOTV Webmaster / Internet Operations (doldham@kotv.com), Clayton Vaughn - Managing Editor (cvaughn @kotv.com), Ron Longinotti - President and General Manager (rlonginotti@kotv.com), and a special address they have for comments for CBS Network news & programming (audsvcs@cbs.com), to give them an opportunity to respond, and more than a month went by, and I had received no response.

On October 25 I sent a second email, to those four, plus Carolyn Fessler - Executive News Director (cfessler@kotv.com), Stephanie Hill - Executive Producer (shill@kotv .com), and Annette Nelson - Programming Information (anelson@kotv.com), and I finally got a response, not from any of them, but from Billy Kulkin - Director of Interactive Sales and Marketing (BKULKIN@kotv.com).

He responded: "When we decided to change our format to cbs.com, we knew there would be a few people that would not accept the change. At the same time, we felt it was the best move for the Interactive Department and KOTV Channel 6. Our goal with cbs.com is to provide both local and national news in one place. We get numerous comments everyday from users who enjoy our site day after day because it's easy to use. Every now and then we get comments similar to yours - from dissatisfied users."

Although he did not admit it, I suspect he was pressured to use the new system from someone at CBS. Another station in town, KTUL, has not had a web site at all (other than some little one page thing thrown together by one of the local Web Malls that wanted to have links to a lot of local businesses), but I now find that there is a http://www.ktul.com and it appears to be almost completely provided by ABC. They use Active Server Pages (ASP) rather than Server Sided Includes (SSI), but if you watch as http://www.ktul.com/indexns.asp loads you will see many different references to webapp.abcnews.com. I would have included a graphic for them as well, just to be fair, but they use that stupid technique of breaking their graphic into two or three pieces, and it was just too hard to paste it in to the newsletter.

The KOTV page is clearly better than the KTUL page, which is apparently configured for 800x600 resolution, does not have video archives (which both KOTV and KJRH do), or many of the other tweaks that would lead me to believe that the local station had much involvement in its creation at all. KTUL has proven one thing, it is not the use of SSI that causes the KOTV site to be slow, because KTUL uses ASP and it is just as slow to load. And at the Internet Sig meetings we have seen examples of both SSI and ASP pages, and neither was particularly slow (in fact some in the audience expressed amazement at how fast it was when I told them the server was generating the ASP page on the fly.

Either the CBS and ABC servers are overloaded, or attempting to gather information from different servers to form a dynamic web page is just not a good idea. I suspect their web master demonstrated the system to his boss from a system with a T1 connection, and management at the networks just never realized how the system would perform when their viewers were accessing it from dial up connections.

At this time the best TV Station Website in Tulsa, IMHO, is http://www.teamtulsa.com (also available on the old address of http://www.kjrh.com).

They balance the desire for local vs national news very effectively. They have a paragraph about a couple of local news stories, with links to Full Story, which will get you the rest of the information about that story, or More News, which will get you to more local news stories. Then they have a paragraph about a couple of statewide news stories, with links to Full Story, which will get you the rest of the information about that story, or More News, which will get you to more statewide news stories. Then they have a paragraph about a couple of national stories, with links to Full Story, which will get you the rest of the information about that story, or More News, which will get you to more national news stories. And all of those links, even the national one, takes you to pages with information provided by the KJRH News Team.

If you want access to the network stuff, they have a link which will take you to http://msnbc.com/local/kjrh/default.asp, which is much like what ABC and CBS have, with some national and some local, driven from the network, except with Team Tulsa, you may elect to stay local and not be bothered with the network stuff.

On your first visit to MSNBC, you'll be asked to download MSNBC's News Menu plugin and enter your and enter your zip code to get local news, weather and sports on your MSNBC front page, and add your favorite stock symbols to get stock quotes and company news, but if you don't want that sort of thing (I certainly did not) you can just hit cancel and you don't have to take it.

My personal opinion is that I dislike http://msnbc.com/local/kjrh/default.asp as much as I dislike http://www.kotv.com/ and http://www.ktul.com/indexns.asp but with KJRH I don't have to use it, I can stay with http://www.teamtulsa.com for local stuff, and http://www.nbc.com/ or http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp for the network stuff (and of the two, I prefer http://www.nbc.com/).

TeamTulsa has a search capability to look through the entire website looking for a particular word (http://search.teamtulsa.com/teamtulsa/), although it seemed to have some problems when I checked it out while writing this article, they have a number of message forums where their viewers can talk about many different topics: Local and area topics (6 folders, 4 discussions), State topics (1 discussion), National issues (8 folders, 4 discussions), General discussion (2 folders, 2 discussions), Politics - Government (4 folders), Hobbies, lifestyles (5 folders), Music (3 discussions), and Film Forum (1 discussion) (http://forums.teamtulsa.com/cgi-bin/WebX?tulsa). They even have a free web based email service, where I could be don@teamtulsa.com.

And, most important to me, who was disappointed in no response from KOTV people after over a month, I sent a message to Team Tulsa (KJRH) about the search engine and other minor problems at 7pm on Friday, and Russell Stewart, Director of New Media, TeamTulsa.com responded Saturday morning. Now that is being responsive.

Here is his response:
"The Search function is powered by a NT box in Cincinnati and they have been having some problems lately, but are working on a fix. Most times, by the time we get the e-mail, the search engine is back up and working. I'll call on it ASAP.

Also, they've changed the computer system in the newsroom that used to archive the newscast scripts, but we are working on getting an auto archive on the new system up and running."

Team Tulsa (KJRH) also offers a Control Cam which covers major events like Oktoberfest, Cape Canaveral shipping out images live from the historic John Glenn Space Shuttle launch, etc, and it allows the viewer to control the direction and magnification of the image being captured.

They also have a static Tower Cam which generates images live from the KJRH 2NEWS tower, a live view from Downtown Tulsa using a camera located on top of Tulsa's BOK Tower, one covering the latest traffic on I-44 and the Broken Arrow Expressway, a look inside the KJRH 2NEWS Weather Center, and a look inside the KJRH 2NEWS News Room.

Both KJRH and KOTV have archives of Real Video captures of their news programs. KJRH has the 10:00 news for the past two weeks, and KOTV has all newscasts, but just for the past week:

Weekdays
News on 6 Morning Update 5:30am - 6:00am CT
6 in the Morning 6:00am - 8:00am CT
News on 6 at Noon 12:00pm - 1:00pm CT
News on 6 at 5 5:00pm - 5:30pm CT
News on 6 at 6 6:00pm - 6:30pm CT
News on 6, 10pm Update 10:00pm - 10:35pm CT
Saturdays
News on 6 at 5 5:00pm - 5:30pm CT
News on 6 at 6 6:00p - 6:30pm CT
News on 6, 10pm Update 10:00pm - 10:35pm CT
Sundays
News on 6 at 5 5:00pm - 5:30pm CT
News on 6 / Sunday Sports Special 10:00pm - 10:45pm CT

KJRH also has One to One clips (using Real Video) of topical interviews. I am writing this just prior to the November elections, and they have clips on:
Laura Boyd, gubernatorial candidate from Tulsa, on Election '98
Linda Morrissey District Judge Candidate
Gordon McAllister, Morrisey's opponent for District Judge
Congressman Steve Largent of Tulsa, on Election '98
plus one on Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, on the Pope's 20th anniversary

Either KJRH or KOTV used to also carry text archives of their news programs for the past week, taken from the teleprompter scripts the talking heads (news anchors) read. I wish they would begin carrying them again. The Real Video archives are nice, but I would like to see both. As Russell Stewart indicated above, KJRH is working on doing just that. What about KOTV; if you won't give people a choice of web pages, like KJRH does, will you at least give us text as well as RealVideo files for news archives???

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