MSNBC taking advantage of high site traffic; FORCING ads.

September 13, 2001 6:33 PM

MSNBC taking advantage of high site traffic; FORCING ads. Personally I'm speechless. I think every other major site out there (no doubt the crippled Yahoo also) is doing this oor will be in the upcoming hours.
posted by HoldenCaulfield (24 comments total)

I don't mean to be a smartass, but you do know that the MS in MSNBC stands for Microsoft and the NBC stands for the National Broadcasting Company, right? How could you be surprised?

(Of course, the less cynical part of me says, high traffic = higher bills = new way to pay for them.)
posted by eyeballkid at 6:37 PM on September 13, 2001

the pathetic part is that there is absolutely no indication anywhere that the ad will lead into the main page when it's done. it looks like a bug more than anything. at the least it's bad design and it's most definately costing them visitors.
posted by kevspace at 6:39 PM on September 13, 2001

Yeah, but I was just talking with a friend at lunch today -- his wife has been watching CNN non-stop since Tues AM, and hasn't seen a single commercial. It's kinda sad to see MSNBC head the polar opposite direction. Not surprising, but sad.
posted by terceiro at 6:40 PM on September 13, 2001

Yeah, but I was just talking with a friend at lunch today -- his wife has been watching CNN non-stop since Tues AM, and hasn't seen a single commercial. It's kinda sad to see MSNBC head the polar opposite direction. Not surprising, but sad.
posted by terceiro at 6:41 PM on September 13, 2001

I've had much better luck with finding timely info from CNN anyhow...
posted by crankydoodle at 6:42 PM on September 13, 2001

hm, funny, i remember the same news cast bashing people for taking advantage of this situation to gain a few extra dollars. how does that old Bible scripture go about removing the needle from your eye?
posted by jmd82 at 6:42 PM on September 13, 2001

they always do this...at least they used to. it's why I link to the quicknews page.

there, I've seen ads for the salvation army and red cross all day, same at abcnews.com.
posted by rebeccablood at 6:45 PM on September 13, 2001

Can't we either use any number of other sources? Or just stick it to the man.
posted by yerfatma at 6:45 PM on September 13, 2001

eyeballkid -

If you assumed that I (a Metafilterian) didn't know what MS stands for in MSNBC, then YOU'RE as good as not knowing what MS stands in MSNBC.

On the main MSNBC page click on NEWS on the left navigation panel and that will take you to the link I provided for the original post.
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 6:46 PM on September 13, 2001

i think msnbc the channel is, like cnn, running ad free...but i don't know, i've mainly been watching cnn and foxnews channels. some other station (abc maybe?) was saying that running 24 hour news with no commercials costs the station about $3 million per day.
posted by rorycberger at 6:46 PM on September 13, 2001

Hasn't MSNBC made you go through an ad page to get to certain pages/sections for a some time? If so, then the only change would be that they STOPPED doing it for a few days. I don't get the problem with it now as compared to any other time.
posted by tippiedog at 6:47 PM on September 13, 2001

Hey Holden it was a joke..... chill my man.
(I followed you're link, I agree with you that it's lame, but I'm just not suprised.)
posted by eyeballkid at 6:52 PM on September 13, 2001

Looks like they cant afford the bandwidth for this. That page just hangs for me, I'm assuming its some flash ad.
posted by skallas at 6:52 PM on September 13, 2001

aaron -

I don't understand your post. That's what I meant, the second-level pages are being "highjacker" (no pun please).

And eyeballkid, I'm glad one of us came out to ease the tensions, if you had put your original post in sarcasm tags then there shouldn't have been a prob.

But I have to agree MSNBC isn't a bad source. Yahoo is starving (well not yet) without ad revenue, that's what I meant when I said they would bring a similar structure in as MSNBC to take advantage of the massive traffic.

BTW, what's with the double post on the main page?
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 7:09 PM on September 13, 2001

Holden-
I though of sarcasm tags, but I thought the "I don't mean to be a smartass" statement would have been enough.

(Don't look now, it's a triple post on the front page.)
posted by eyeballkid at 7:17 PM on September 13, 2001

Holden: Sorry, I didn't know you were talking about the second-level pages in your original post. In any case, I've seen those ads for a long time. It would be more tasteful if MSNBC would pull them for the time being, though.
posted by aaron at 7:17 PM on September 13, 2001

eyeballkid -

It's cool don't worry about it, and in some instances just putting "I don't mean to be a smartass" doesn't mean sarcasm, it might actually be interpreted as "I don't mean to be a smartass".

I appologize for my post targetting you, I have no idea how I pressed post after re-reading in preview. That's what 20 minutes hind-sight brings.
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 7:33 PM on September 13, 2001

If anyone wants up-to-the-second updates, I've found #coverage on irc.slashnet.org to be invaluable. There's also a "live" (delayed by about 5 seconds :-) ) transcription of CNN in #cnn_mjd.
posted by smaugy at 7:49 PM on September 13, 2001

MSNBC has always had these on their subpages.
posted by owillis at 8:09 PM on September 13, 2001

hey holden, unrelated, but are you aero holden? if so, i'm a fellow srf-er, and would like to say howdy.
posted by mich9139 at 9:38 PM on September 13, 2001

Jesus Fucking Christ Holden. MSNBC has always had interstitial ads between the coverpage and the separate sections. The coverpage URL is here: http://www.msnbc.com/default.asp. Your link, above, is simply a section, the general news section (slightly different than the cover page) : http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp.

Jumping to nasty assumptions sucks all around. I'm friends with quite a few folks at msnbc.com, I used to work there a few years back. There are some folks doing ugly things out there, but this isn't one of them.
posted by kokogiak at 10:04 PM on September 13, 2001

Aw crap. They're playing with their URLs, so some of what I wrote may not make sense if you click the links, but you get the gist of it.
posted by kokogiak at 10:14 PM on September 13, 2001

Hmm, sorry thought the ads were put there recently, I've never seen them there before, oh well. Mod care to delete that useless front page post of mine?

mich9139 - no I'm not aero holden, my nick is the main character of "The Catcher In The Rye".
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 4:50 AM on September 14, 2001