Trial and Error

The CBS Television Stations deal to provide local news clips to Yahoo kicked in yesterday, so I make a visit to Yahoo.com and check out the news tab in the middle of the page. (Our news story: Yahoo, CBS Link Internet, Stations). It displays Bay Areas news since I live in San Francisco.

I don’t see any video icons, but strangely the list of local news stories includes items from “The Daily Journal,” a New Jersey publication. So something’s amiss from the start. I click on the link for “More bay area news” and that does indeed whisk me to a page that lists text stories from the San Francisco Chronicle on the left hand side with thumbnails for local video from KPIX-TV, the San Francisco CBS-owned station, on the right hand side.

Immediately, a window opens that includes an embedded player and a list of few dozen additional videos from KPIX. I check out some videos and test the features. Pause and play work without any problems. Then I hit the skip button and it jumps me instantly to the next video. I hit it again and bam — I’m into the next one.

This is kind of cool. I feel like I am fast forwarding through a newscast, just skipping to the start of each news story. I can also browse the thumbnails. I randomly start clicking on images and the videos load and play, 1,2 3.

I spot a search window and enter “cats.” That brings me a list of cat-centric videos, such as one on a cat show in Madison Square Garden from New York’s CBS-owned station WCBS-TV.

But I want to go back to San Francisco news and what do you know — there’s a link there for San Francisco.

I like this service because there are escape hatches everywhere. I can get in and out of the service and the videos quickly. Yahoo just needs to make them easier to find on the home page.