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We Want the World and We Want It When We Want It

Is it just me, or are those Cable News Anchors taking way too much license with their "Coming up next..." teasers?

So I'm standing at the kitchen counter having my morning cereal. The news anchor teases me into staying around long enough to catch some segment that promises to be somewhat interesting. The commercial break comes and goes. In the 150-second program segment that follows that 180-second commercial break (and by the way, what's wrong with THAT picture?), there is no mention of the news story I'm sticking around for. I think to myself, "I can probably find this faster in my news feeds." But it's early, I'm not very awake yet, and I could use a little more cereal. So I stick around a little longer. Another 180-second commercial break. Another 150-second program segment. Still no story.

I'm tired of this. And, it turns out, so are lots of people.

According to a press release from market researcher comScore, U.S. Internet users viewed 12,667,063,000 (12.7 billion) online videos during the month of November 2008, representing an increase of 34 percent versus the previous November.

Not surprisingly, 40% of those 12.7 videos were served up by YouTube.

Yeah: I know that the likes of Chris Crocker, Jeff Dunham/Achmed, the Jonas Brothers, and HotForWords account for a big chunk of Internet video viewing. But I believe these statistics also highlight the trend toward abandoning the boob tube for YouTube (and other Internet video sources).

We've come to demand On-Demand. We're TiVo-ing and DVR-ing our favorite TV programs. We're canceling (or downgrading) our Netflix subscriptions in favor of Pay-Per-View and On-Demand programming. We're embracing RSS newsfeeds as substitutes for — or at least supplements to — e-mail newsletters. We're listening to All Things Considered podcasts on our smart phones instead of on our radios.

We want things when we want them.

[Segue to Web-site design?]

A Web site is, potentially, the epitome of On-Demand. I say "potentially" because one can blow it. You can defeat the On-Demand value of your Web site in any number of ways; here are just a few that come to mind:

• content that is not kept up-to-date


• navigation that is unintuitive


• writing whose style or tone fails to engage the visitor


• a layout that does not promote readability


• making the mistake of assuming your Web-site visitors constitute a captive audience

As I try to bring this meandering blog entry to closure, I realize that that last bullet point — making the mistake of assuming your Web-site visitors constitute a captive audience — is the other bookend (news anchors who tease being the first).

There are no captive audiences. There are only captured and captivated audiences. And we can't capture and captivate audiences with teases and undelivered promises.