Throwback Thursday: forcing a square peg into a round hole (revisiting "Just a "touch" of news, now this" three years later)

Three years is a small eternity in the Shift the media is going through. In September of 2013, I wrote about TouchVision and NowThisNews. It should be telling that I linked to the NTN website, but not to TouchVision's. That's because TouchVision folded, while NowThisNews is expanding in the digital space.
TouchVision folded in January of 2016. Media coverage did not explain why the operation founded, but I think part of the reason may be its central approach: to bring a modern digital aesthetic to broadcast television. Simply put: they were not just trying to stick a square peg into a round hole; they were trying to push the digital stream through a piece of glass.

NowThisNews focuses on making videos for the digital native: they are quick, impactful, bright, colorful, and optimized for mobile. Many work as well with audio as without. They are fully optimized for their medium. TouchVision pursued a similar approach, except they attempted to make their presentation work on both digital and broadcast, and I think that's their problem. TouchVision learned the hard way that you really can't be all things to all people. If I want to watch short and sweet videos with a little edge in a short amount of time, I'm going to watch on a mobile device, and I'm going to hold it in my hand, and maybe even share it over social media. If I feel like sitting down at my television, and I decide to watch a news program, it is because I'm in a mood to ingest media in a longer form that lends itself to the bigger screen, and the extended viewing time that comes with sitting down in front of a television.

There are some instances where products for one medium can be repurposed for the other. TV Stations have been clipping video from newscasts to play on their digital platforms since the time that their only "digital platform" was a the rudimentary websites of the 1990s. Now many broadcasters are posting raw video, and digital only stories. The "Facebook live" revolution is underway, and more and more broadcasters will soon figure out how to do a "Facebook live" presentation that is more sophisticated than simply "hold the phone and point the camera at something while you narrate."

There may even be lessons to learn from what comes after the late news. The Late Night talk shows (think Kimmel, Fallon, SNL, etc.) have found a lot of their digital audience through videos of skits and bits that work well on the broadcast medium, but also have a second life as a sharable digital presentation. They've figured out how to get that square peg into the round hole: first, sand down the corners.