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WBAY-TV's Ted Miller didn't know his station had a site;
now, he runs it
By
Ray Barrington
Dot Com Magazine
When it comes to the pride and joy of WBAY-TV Channel 2's
Website, wbay.com, webmaster Ted Miller is quick to point
it out. It's not the updated news, the live radar or the
graphics plugging ABC shows.
It's "NEWSites," a list of Web addresses in the
WBAY viewing area. That's an ever-growing list, of course,
and it's Miller's personal favorite part of the site.
"That's
my baby," he says as he calls it up. "It's just
hundreds - thousands - of Web sites I can find. Whether
it's on a billboard, a newspaper article, an ad, I'll steal
it. I don't know how many we have, but the last time we
printed it out, it was 29 single-spaced pages."Spoken
like a true Internet user. Which Miller is - and that's
the reason he does what he does now.
Miller
has been at WBAY for 11 years, working as a news producer
for the station's morning and 10 p.m. newscasts. Five years
ago, after
getting his own Internet connection, he casually checked
a search engine and found, to his surprise, that WBAY had
a Web site.
"It really was just a Web site; there was no content,"
he said. "It needs more than a link to ABC and CNN
and the Weather Channel."
So he bought a book on HTML, and got to work. He volunteered
to help out, and ended up spending six to 20 hours a week
doing so.
"I put together an idea for a page of news and weather
and sports and how we could do it," he said. "People
responded. From then on, I was always updating it after
the newscasts."
It was becoming clear the site needed more than a volunteer
touch."Finally I said 'you can do this as a 40-hour-a-week
job," he said.
"I
pitched it about a year ago, how to have a full-time webmaster
and finally pay for it, and it took some time to go through
corporate - Young Broadcasting - but it was approved back
in December."
The site is helped by WBAY's long-standing spot at or near
the top of the newscast ratings. Indeed, it's just before
the early-evening newscasts go on the air that wbay.com
gets the majority of its
visitors.
"The nice thing about being full-time is we update
constantly, before and during the news," he said.
During the recent local elections, the site had election
results, and the night was one of the best ever for visits."We
don't want to detract from what we do," he said. "But
it's not only information, it's promotion."
The
single favorite page, he says, shows the station's "Doppler
X" radar.Miller is helped by World Now software, which
is dedicated to helping
TV stations get on the internet. It's made the site look
more professional, but Miller said he misses some of the
decoration that used to be on the site.
"We'd
have the WBAY building with rain and flashing lights for
Halloween, or the Iwo Jima picture for Memorial Day,"
he said. "It looks more professional now, but it's
lost a bit of personality."
One piece of personality is a page on what's new at the
site, updated - and signed - by Miller. "That started
because I was putting so many sites on the NEW Sites page
that I wanted to show off," he said.
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