Tech
CTV Blows Launch of CP24.com
Today marks the launch of CP24.com. Like its broadcast companion, the site places an overwhelming emphasis on weather, stock quotes and, um, ads. A scroll below the fold reveals some local headlines, mundane celebrity gossip and seemingly random sports news.
When I first saw the site I wondered why CTV even bothered. It's almost an embarrassing carbon copy of the TV experience, but without the stuff that works well on TV like sound and video. While a prominent video takes up space on the left of the screen my efforts to get it to load went unrewarded. Perhaps just a typical first day glitch.
For those keeping score, there's also no RSS feeds, no reader comments and no social media functionality to name just three obvious misses.
In its previous life, CP24.com simply forwarded to CityNews. But in the wake of the whole Rogers takeover, CTV must have eventually come to realize it no longer made sense sending traffic to a competitor.
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I think these guys could learn a thing from Yahoo and their homepage.
CTV should not have been allowed to keep CP24. They already have two 24h news channels. (CTV NewsNet and BNN.)
We tried to get involved, we tried to help but they would not hear it so now all we can do is sit back and laugh (to keep ourselves from crying of course).
Nothing there for me to really form an opinion one way or another, except to say it has more content than the 680 News site that is often linked to BlogTO.
@ Will, don't worry you can tell it wasn't designed by your team.
The site is poorly designed as anything I've seen. It's navigation is terrible, and the usability is out the window. The layout is piss poor and the people running it should be removed for people who know what they are doing.
Talk about a disaster site, a four year old could design a better one. So much crammed into one page and with no focus. My eye doesn't know where to look.
The CP24.com site is useless in terms of providing a good summary of news content at a glance. I can't imagine I'll use it.
Sad.
As the former web designer / interactive producer for CTV.ca (from 2005 to late 2007), I designed many sites, including the current CTV affiliates sites - CTVtoronto.ca, etc.
no, I didn't design the CP24 site.
The "TV People" do not call the shots on the design. they're responsible for the content and have heavy input into the layout.
knowing how things operate, my informed guess is that the current design is merely a placeholder until they figure out what they want to do with the site. it's uglier than a crocodile's ass but it'll change either very quickly or at a glacial pace.
they may also be changing the pub tool from whatever Chum was using to the Globe and Mail created pub tool that runs the majority of the web properties. that takes time and until the pieces are all in place then the site will look like it does. is it the best approach? not really. I believe that users are loathe to come back to a site once they've been turned off. will they come back again if it gets better? yes.
citynews.ca always sucked. the best thing they ever did was copy the traffic map design and functionality that I created for CTV Toronto.
compare for yourself:
http://toronto.ctv.ca/traffic/
http://www.citynews.ca/traffic.aspx
How is this any different than the big box ad featured prominently at the top of this page?
Websites and the content on them can't all be created for free, just like the tv shows and newspapers these things are based on can't be created for free either. Those ads help pay for the infrastructure and employees needed to create and maintain the site.
If you have a better idea about how a website is suppose to generate revenue there are millions of web developers and designers around the world who would love to rip the ads off their websites.
two things that are necessary for successful commercial design are logos and ads.
it'll drive you to drink.
Yes, that would be awesome, I can see it now:
-Movies Review: Ghost & The Darkness: "Scary movie boring, mean man hurts pretty kitty"
-Travel Section, by Dora The Explorer, and her friend Boots, who is super cool explor-a-lora.
-Community Section: The Wonder Pets: Heroes, or Nosey Nestors?
-Reminder to tune into nightly news, with your anchors, The Backyardigans.
this site is utter garbage , im taking it off my common daily visit sites ... what a bunch of douche bags , the old site was 10000000000 x better
hopefully after this time they wont let the suits out from behind the desks and let the real developers do their job.
you can't buy something that isn't for sale, and the powers that used to be at Chum put the empire up for grabs.
to their credit, CTV has largely only done two things so far: slap their logo on existing shows and cross-pollinated channels with shows they should've had but couldn't get before - So You Think You Can Dance on MuchMusic is a perfect example.
and while I think that efforts have been sometimes ham fisted - eTalk at 299 gives me that "old guy in the club" vibe. I don't know if any other major player could keep the Chum spirit as much as CTV.
That so-called video player made me want to go back to watching analogue with my rabbit ears.
on a side note, not too thrilled with Citytv.com but I do like CTV.ca (nice reversal there, eh?)
on a further side note, great of CTV to develop websites for CP24 when they still have like 10 broadcast properties in the Citytv buildings in Calgary/Edmonton. Okay, they did move two channels out last week but, it's been a year of new ownership for those properties...just sayin.
Of course, I'm sure everything CHUM did was 10 fold better than pre-merger...just look at all of the cookie-cutter and shallow Web sites they rolled out pre-CTV: www.bravo.ca, www.spacecast.com, www.star-tv.com and www.fashiontelevision.com, for example...
As somebody who does site designs for a living, I appreciate that www.cp24.com is new and different, it is very functional (news, weather, traffic, stocks all above the fold) and replicates many of the aspects that people tune into the channel for (where about 99% of their audience will be referred from).
I can also say from experience that people tend to expose themselves as 'resistant to change' when any site redesigns, anyone remember last year's cbc.ca redesign? TheStar.com? Do you really want all of your favourite '90s Web sites back or are we trying to move forward as a medium?
Granted cp24.com is not perfect but they have introduced some new elements to a site that I haven't seen before -- something CHUM hasn't done in a long time.
Bri
the citynews channel is launching this year !!!!
Leave it to CP24 to send out two reporters to do a story on the sunny weather!!! They say they HAVE breaking news more than they DO breaking news
CP24 has just announced that it's a cool 12c.
"15c-16c is normal for this time of year. Yes, it's the first full weekend of May!"
If something is not done soon, they will ask a part of Canada to form a separate government for the Tamil community here.
These people are definetely representing the LTTe ( which is banned in Canada) since they are carrying the LTTE flag & yelling " our leader Prabhakaran". The LTTe is pretty much used to employing children as soldiers so they are not worried about their own childrens safety.
If something is not done soon , to stop these idiotic protestors they will ask a part of Canada to form a separate government for the Tamil community here.
Tell it like it is or stop telling it.