Someone should put together a good comprehensive summary of the news and post it on YouTube. The problem with network news is that they have to fill it with feel good stuff, celebrity junk, and have commercials that take up 30% of the on-air time.
You could even exploit the long tail and do some fancy personalization if you recorded say 100 short segments that covered the major headlines of the day. You could then have standard transitions that you use between segments that are also pre-recorded. Based on a profile people create you could you could automatically slice together different segments that might be of interest to that user.
You could also have a few “stock” compilations for things like world news, US news, politics, entertainment news, etc. People could just come to these and hit play without having to sign in or save/create a profile.
Why is this better than reading the news? For the same reason that going to a lecture is better than a book. If you can see it AND hear it, it’s far easier to stay engaged and just reading on your own is a lot more effort. There are a lot of people out there who would rather listen and watch the news than read it and have to hunt around for the most relevant stories.
So start simple, do a news recap without all the crap on most news shows, put it on YouTube and get a userbase. Then launch your own site with high quality production and personalization. Done and done.
Avichal Garg 