Line 56 Media

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC News is close to scrapping the current format of its daily “World News” Webcast, an online version of the evening news anchored by Charles Gibson, which the network trumpeted as a major step into its digital future when it launched two years ago.

ABC

ABC’s World News Webcast

ABC’s news-division president, David Westin, says the network is considering ways to reinvent the broadcast, including as a series of updates throughout the day.

“I have no interest in abandoning this,” he says, “I want to look at it and say, ‘What have we learned from it?’ ‘How can we reconfigure it?’ ‘What can we do better?’”

The troubles with “World News” highlight a larger struggle across the broadcast landscape to deliver news on the Web. The broadcast networks’ news divisions haven’t been able to convince many viewers or advertisers to move with them online, in part because their TV audience is older.

ABC’s nightly news show drew 7.6 million daily TV viewers last week. NBC had slightly more, and even third-place CBS attracted 5.8 million. But the audience is aging and doesn’t tend to go Web-surfing.

Last Monday, ABCNews.com logged 7.8 million page views, according to an internal traffic report, although Paul Slavin, the senior vice president of digital for ABC News, said the usual traffic is closer to 8.4 million. Of those, the “World News” page, which includes stories and photos as well as a link to the Webcast, got only about 145,000 hits. The “World News” Webcast is a 15-minute afternoon broadcast tailored for the Web, including the daily news along with stories about technology and popular culture.

Network executives and media buyers say that broadcast news suffers online when it is based on the old news model of a strong and authoritative anchor, like Mr. Gibson, escorting viewers through the day’s news. Online news consumers want to click around, reading and watching only the stories that interest them.

Another problem is the traditional newsy bent of these shows. Inside ABC’s Web division, the mantra is: “Hard news is a hard sell.” Of last Monday’s 7.8 million clicks, three million were to photo slideshows, including one of celebrities at the beach and another of the “pregnant man.” Some hard-news categories have done well: Page views for the health and politics sections of the site have increased around threefold since last year, with 14.9 million page views for the health section in May and 19.4 million for politics. Mr. Westin says ABC plans to build these niche focuses.

Rival CBS Corp.’s CBS News is also on the verge of a major change, says CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith. In coming weeks, it will unveil a new destination for celebrity news and will be using its pending acquisition of CNET to bolster its news offerings.

I’m sorry that we could not preview our visit or announce it in advance in any way — but we’re here, in the capital city of Kabul.

We inserted into Afghanistan via Dubai, which is a trip in itself, and makes for a jarring comparison — flying from a land of such opulence and unrestrained spending and construction, into this comparatively troubled and primitive nation.

Once we landed, it was an aircraft-lover’s paradise. The first thing we saw was an array of three choppers hovering while taxiing from one end of the field to the other. All three were Vietnam-era American helicopters, two Hueys and a Chinook bearing fresh Afghanistan military markings on the fuselage. I saw two Soviet-made Ilyushins, a Beechcraft 900, and too many other prop and jet aircrafts to mention.  Temporary military radar stands guard over the field, part of a self-contained unit hoisted atop a crane built for just that purpose and staffed by NATO forces.

I have traveled here with the lovely and sturdy senior producer Subrata De, who warned me last night in Dubai that we may have to pretend to be husband and wife on the flight. She knew that Afghan elders were likely to try to eject her from her seat near the front of the aircraft, and she turned out to be right.  Before takeoff, an elderly man plopped his bag down next to her aisle seat, and was clearly making an argument to the flight attendant that he deserved to sit there instead of his assigned seat further back. Subrata, my pretend wife for those five minutes, was steadfast and won the standoff.  I later noticed that upon landing she casually slipped the scarf she was wearing onto the top of her head for disembarking. All of the women we’ve seen on this trip are back to having their heads covered — in most cases, the burkas (full-body coverings with slits for eyes or mesh over the face) have come roaring back.

A striking event took place on our interesting final approach to landing. While we were banking hard to line ourselves up with the runway, I looked down at a goat herder tending a modest flock on steep mountain terrain outside Afghanistan.  It was a tableau that could easily have been from 2,000 years ago.  At exactly that moment, my Blackberry vibrated to life in its holster on my belt, filling up with overnight emails from New York and elsewhere. A wireless society. A confusing, changing place.

We took a trip to a nearby open-air market this afternoon, where we interviewed an American with a local NGO who has been here on and off since the 1970s.  You’ll see the sequence on tonight’s broadcast, as part of our segment on the food emergency.

The heat is withering, the sun blistering, and we’re also getting used to the altitude, as Kabul stands at about 6,000 feet above sea level. A modest altitude by the standards of portions of this region, but it takes getting used to nonetheless.

Because of where we are and who we are, security is a big part of a trip like this, and we’re well taken care of. Our travel team includes members of the same teams who keep Richard Engel and our Baghdad bureau safe… many of them veterans of the fearsome British SAS. The security situation will, however, prevent me from talking about our travels and upcoming broadcasts from inside this country: except to say that we are here mostly to check in on the U.S. military effort here.  This is a tough place to get to, a tough work environment, and a tough place to get around. Our clocks are all screwed up, and it’s only going to get worse as our airtime schedule (3 a.m. locally — Afghanistan is 8 hours 30 minutes off New York time — don’t ask me to explain the 30 minutes) collides with daytime here and the need to do our shooting and reporting in daylight wherever possible.

I should also add that I’ve been trying to get here for some time, and while not everyone in New York was exactly in love with the idea of traveling here, the time was right and I appreciate being able to come here — as I appreciate the hard work and precautions that have gone into this trip.

I sure hope you can join us tonight as we originate the broadcast from Kabul.