Sunday, February 15, 2009

LVRJ.Com Not Ready For Primetime...

...as usual.

On page 3A of today's newspaper, there's this very prominent notice:

RJTV on the air

In a new feature for the Web site, Nate Tannenbaum will present the latest headlines and upcoming news from the R-J. Check the top of the home page for the link or the Multimedia page.

I don't know about you, but this filled me with uncontainable delight, inspiring overwhelming fits of anxious anticipation. So I rushed to the website to see what this project that has been so hyped for so long has in store! I mean, it's been in development for more than three months. I can't imagine what could possibly take so long, but finally the blessed day has arrived and RJTV is on the air! (Of course, it is not transmitted over the air, but accuracy, schmaccuracy.)

So, anyway, I go to the Review-Journal. And I see this:


Can you find the promised reference to RJTV? No, me either. There's nothing there. So I went on to the link published with that printed announcement in the newspaper, which is www.reviewjournal.com/webextras.


Hmmm. No impractical, unsubscribable video file of a bow-tie-wearing ex-weatherman here, either.

So why would they put it in the newspaper? Don't ask me; I've long since given up on figuring these folks out. But I did find something else kind of interesting when I hunted for my RJTV fix: That video with the bare bottom about the porn folks that accompanied Corey Levitan's piece last weekend isn't in the Multimedia site's archive. It's still available on the website, but it's not in the list of Most Recent Videos. Nor, for that matter, is the Doug Elfman-anchored Vegasland show -- either the current one or most of the old ones.

It all adds up to an online division in obvious, continuous disarray. It cracks me up that they claim such ambitious plans as putting Tannenbaum's show on smart phones when they don't even have Elfman's weekly program on an RSS feed or available for subscription in iTunes. I guess we'll have to wait for their Online Guy to go to the conference where they'll teach him that.

But, hey, they shouldn't feel TOO badly. (Well, yeah they should.) Look what you see at first when you go to Mirage.Com these days:


Yep - there's "Little Time Left" until they unveil the new volcano that, uh, has been open for two months now. Odd. At least from what I can tell they've scrubbed the site of Siegfried & Roy and Danny Gans, finally. That was embarrassing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i see a "volcano is here" flash thingy on mirage.com maybe you need to dump your cache or hard refresh it? as for the r-j.... their site stinks.

Anonymous said...

Refresh mirage.com dude. It's erupting nightly. As for the RJ; don't know what to tell you. They now have a mobile site, lvrj.com/mobile, which at least makes it tolerable to view on the cellphone, but you're right, no hope for the anti-css, anti-div tag mess of a home for Las Vegas news.

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

oh, i know that Mirage.Com switches to Volcano Is Here -- it does that on my computer, too. But for a few seconds before it gets to that, this is the image that you see. take another look.

Anonymous said...

mac/safari it doesnt do that, but on firefox it does flash the "Little Time Left" then does a switcheroo.... 1/8th of a second on my machine.

fwiw, here's the culprit... a swf file with a jacked up timeline:
http://www.mirage.com/images/home/volcanoCountdown.swf