FNC’s Web Video Strategy…

AdWeek’s Mike Shields writes about FNC’s web video strategy after the success of the Strategy Room…

While video clips have been a staple of news sites for four years, live Web video has been fairly limited. ABC News has long produced a short daily original Webcast. In 2005, CNN launched a subscription-based live video product Pipeline, only to relaunch it in ‘07 as the free CNN.com Live, which blends some original programming with live feeds of Congressional subcommittees and breaking news. In the past year, CBSNews.com has introduced a handful of live shows, including the weekly political roundtable Washington Unplugged — which was also born out of success in live programming during last year’s election. Recently, The Wall Street Journal rolled out a daily live news show.

But few media companies have taken as big a leap as Fox has with Strategy Room, which has a fully programmed lineup, including a regular entertainment show, a health series and a business hour.

“We’ve spent the last 12 months playing with the schedule to see what people are interested in,” says Fox News’ digital vp Jeff Misenti in an interview in his office, down the hall from the Strategy Room sets. “With our audience, they’re always interested in politics. But they’re not interested in nine hours of it.”

Viewers are interested in watching live content, particularly at work. The audience for Strategy Room isn’t huge, but it is consistent. In September the network averaged 28,000 viewers per day, peaking at 38,000. Viewership spikes around midday, tailing off near 4 p.m. “There have been two surprising things for me,” says Misenti. “The number of people that watch these things for more than 15 minutes is impressive. The other thing we’ve found that is very interesting is, people do want to interact with the program. More than you’d think.”