FOX 26 Website Goes High-Tech

For a local TV station that had a horrible website for such a long time, I've got to give props to Fox 26 (KRIV) for pushing the envelope with new features on their website and newly launched beta site.

As southeast Texas prepares for Tropical Storm Edouard, the Fox 26 beta site is multitasking with live streaming video of its 9pm newscast, animated satellite images of the gulf, links to radar in 18 surrounding counties plus webcams from Galveston, Kemah, Corpus Christi and other locales.

An interesting feature is that the live newscast feed from the studio continues to roll during on-air commercial breaks. It's always fun to learn what goes on behind the cameras when anchors are not on but someone should tell Melissa Wilson not to brush her hair so much and watch the chatter on her personal life. But this is an experiment in progress.

I'm still trying to figure out the usefulness of the chat feature. Users can log on and type messages to each other. The chatter I noticed centered around the newscast and the doomsday forecast. A lot of mocking going on but what else do they have to do as they stock up on water and tuna? If you hang around the web page for a while make sure to mute the sound on the chat feature as each message posted has an accompanying noise. The messages were coming fast and furious and that noise drove me crazy.