While living 4234 miles from my home town, on another continent does have certain advantages, there’s also a bit lost in translation (literally).  And I honestly don’t know what’s taken me so long, but I finally discovered/got around to including the ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news video podcasts in my regular rotation.  I work out in the mornings (calm down ladies, it’s really nothing to get hot and bothered about) and figured out that I could kill two birds with one stone: lose the weight, gain some knowledge (and hopefully a bit of muscle while I’m at it) via video news podcast updates.  All three networks provide them free of charge via the iTunes store, but there are some differences, not just in quality, but delivery.

ABC

ABC

Out of the three, ABC receives the lowest scores.  While the other two networks deliver iPod-ized versions of the previous evenings news, ABC takes another route and creates an entirely new show specifically for the podcast version.  Sounds great, right?  Well, in actuality it’s almost offensive.  ABC is committing an intellectual offense.  By creating this completely new version of the news, I’m always left wondering, “Well, what happened during the actual broadcast version?  Was/Is there something that I’m missing here?”  Granted, ABC does include a 45 second highlight at the end of these podcasts by presenting their ‘Partnership with Google’ segment, in which they highlight the days’ trending (top searched) topics of the day, but to be honest, I’m not sure if they’re not just looking for filler here.

The ABC video podcast weighs in (on average) at a paltry 86 MB, making it a quick delivery (if mid-afternoon news is your deal), but also suffering from what I like to call, RUFK video quality.  Granted, on the average iPod or iPhone screen, this video quality is fine, but on my 24 inch desktop monitor…Well, let’s just say, I’ve counted pixels.  ABC FAIL.

ABC also comes in dead last with delivery times.  I live in Europe, which means I’m 6 hours ahead of the Eastern Seaboard, so when I’m working out at 8am, it’s still only 2am in New York.  However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not hungry for my daily dose of corporate sponsored news.  When I open iTunes in the morning to sync up the podcasts, you can imagine my dismay when ABC’s most recent update is from two days ago.  I tracked delivery times last week, and found that ABC’s ’special’ (perhaps as in bus?) section arrives around 1 in the afternoon here, or 8am EST, putting them in dead last.  Next.

CBS

CBS

The CBS podcast gets 8 out of 10 marks.  They deliver a full version of the previous evening’s broadcast, Katie Couric included (be that good or bad).  The only reason for the markdown is, as we saw with ABC, delivery time.  CBS is only slightly better than ABC, with an average delivery time of 11 am CET, or 5 am EST.

Video quality is greatly improved over ABC, with the average podcast coming down at around 100 MB.  That may sound like a lot, but given today’s broadband speeds and sharing technologies, I’ve never waited more than a minute to download this podcast.

NBC

NBC

Mr. Brian Williams, sir, I stand and applaud you.  Ok, I’m quite certain that Brian Williams has, in fact, nothing to do with the NBC Evening News Video podcast, but the IT type folks at NBC have nailed it.  Not just a fluke, the NBC Evening News video podcast is a rock.  Simply due to this podcast, the NBC news is now my preferred source (obviously after The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, where everyone else gets their news, right?).

Video quality is outstanding, with the average download being somewhere in the 120 MB range, and I only very rarely can see a pixel or two, on my obviously way bigger than your average iPod or iPhone screen resolution.  NBC is also the only podcast that is made available in a widescreen format.  Again, not a bank breaker, but to this geek, a duly noted attention, or lack of, as it were, to detail.

Delivery time?  Fuggetaboutit.  As previously stated, I’m looking for fresh content around 8am CET, or 2am EST.  I’ve never looked any earlier than this time, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that NBC is posting this update 20 minutes after closing the show.  Of the three, NBC has never let me down, and always delivers the most up to date (with a day delay – it’s Europe, I’d expect it) news.  We have a winner!

Overall, I’m grateful to all three sources, as none of them have to provide this service, and that’s exactly what it is, a service, and free at that.  I can certainly see merits in what ABC’s trying to do, but I think they’re coming up short of the mark.  CBS, close, but no cigar.  If they’d put a little speed on their scheduled upload and available to the world schedule, they’d be on par with NBC.  And as far as NBC goes, delivery time and quality count in my book, and you folks, deliver on both fronts.

After watching three different broadcasts of each network’s evening news programs, let me simply leave you with this question:  Why do they all report, more or less, the exact same stories as their competitors?  Oh wait…that’s right.  We leave the ‘other’ news to those ‘less’ successful evening news programs over on that cable channel and put them on late at night.  Who could possibly be watching?