TV News Channels: User Friendly URL schemes and Syndication options

Websites of TV News Channels: URL schemes and Syndication options

I wanted to blog about the massacre and madness happening in Assam and Bihar. So I was checking out the relevant links and I landed up on ndtv.com. Ask any blogger and he'll tell you that the first thing he'd look for is a syndication feed and second, is the link to that particular web page/article, or in blogger lingo, a perma-link; NDTV offers little in this regard. They have masked the original URLs (in the address bar of my browser); when you click on any page on their site the URL in your address bar remains ndtv.com ?– the URLt url. A short-cut though is 1) Right-click on the links displayed on say- the home-page, 2)Click on 'Properties', and 3) Select the resulting URL. This is how it appears: http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?template=Polls2004&slug=BJP+chalks+out+election+strategy&id=13584&callid=0&category=National Not exactly a friendly URL scheme. I don't understand why NDTV.com is not offering a syndication option. Even BBC offers syndication to its readers. Guardian also offers its readers a syndication option. I would like it if NDTV changes its URL scheme; not every blogger is tech-savvy enough to figure out that by right-clicking on 'linked' text, he or she can get the target URL. NDTV.com should also consider offering its readers a syndication option. Next, I wanted to see if other TV channels (news) got the basics right on their sites.

Aaj Tak

I went to AajTak's site only to be welcomed by a dialogue that asked me to 'Trust' in some 'bit stream web font' I said no; hell, I could get fired for s**t like this. But, the site wouldn't open without my clicking on 'Yes' to the bit stream whatever. The site is -let's stick to the issue of syndication and URLs now - well, they offer no syndication options. Ah well.

Star News

I don't know if they have a site; I couldn't find it on http://www.star.co.in/ and this site http://www.startv.com/eng/op_channel.cfm?channel_id=25®ion_id=india has a 'profile' of Star News. Do you know what is the URL? Well, that seals it; if I can't find the url of the site through a simple search on google (keywords: star news india), I am not interested in their syndication options. I know they don't have one.

DD News

The big daddy of Indian TV; took its own sweet time to load it site on my browser. And finally when it did load I was presented with the 'program schedule' of the tv channel. And nothing else. Well... never mind.

Other sites

Rediff does not offer syndication (despite being the only blogging service provider in India!). So many news sites don't offer content for syndication. I don't know why, it only brings them hits and page-views. Indiatimes (grunt) obviously doesn't offer syndication and though its url scheme is all right, the site takes longer than necessary to load.

Conclusion

I think that by offering syndication (allowing people to display headlines) any news site can only profit from it. It beats me why the news sites in India ignore this simple logic. I would expect at least NDTV to take this cue. Let's wait and watch. write to me: suman at sumankumar dot com

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