Operating a bit like a stealth business news network, The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday announced a major expansion of its video unit, which is now producing three and a half hours of live programming each weekday and will soon produce even more.
In a bid for more viewers and advertisers, The Journal released a new video app, called WSJ Live, for iPads and for a wide array of Internet-connected television sets and set-top boxes. Previously the newspaper’s live newscasts were mainly confined to The Journal’s Web site, WSJ.com.
The Journal, which already produces far more live video than other newspapers in the United States do, is acting on the idea that video is fast becoming a critical part of news Web sites, even for the entities that have historically profited from words, not moving pictures.
WSJ Live began two years ago as a twice-a-day video update from the newspaper’s newsroom, and it has grown to keep pace with advertisers. “The demand for video ads is huge,” Alan Murray, a deputy managing editor for The Journal, said in an interview.
The Journal’s site now has a series of half-hour newscasts that start at 8:30 a.m. Eastern and continue on and off until 4:30 p.m., following the rhythms of United States stock markets. A half-hour opinion program starts at 5 p.m. On a few especially busy news days, the live stream has continued for five hours. Mr. Murray said more live programming would most likely be added by the end of the year.
Lacking big hair and big personalities, the video operation is consciously unlike television, but it does have slick graphics, branded segments and — as of late — TV-like pauses for commercial breaks. Over the summer The Journal extended several of its 10-to-12-minute newscasts to half-hours. Mr. Murray said it was a “money-making enterprise.”
For the most part the programs rely on The Journal’s existing staff. Readers and users “like seeing our reporters live. They like being able to go to places and see the things that our reporters can see. And technology allows us to do it now,” Mr. Murray said.
The Journal has expanded its video content in spite of its contract with CNBC, the leading business news network on television, and in spite of the fact that The Journal’s parent has its own business network, Fox Business. The CNBC contract expires in about 15 months, but already Journal reporters tend to appear more often on Fox than on CNBC.
If WSJ Live becomes available on more Internet-connected televisions and becomes recognized as its own sort of network, reporter appearances on the networks may become less meaningful.
Mr. Murray, who once anchored a daily newscast for CNBC, said he never felt as if journalism was “the top priority” there. On WSJ Live, it is, he said: “We think of it as another way of highlighting the good journalism that goes on around here.”
The sites for other major newspapers, including The New York Times, have experimented with live video streams, but not to the same degree as The Journal. Richard Greenfield, an analyst for BTIG Capital, said he found it interesting that the WSJ Live streams were “free without the pay wall, whereas The Journal has one of the highest pay walls around.”
The Journal said Tuesday that WSJ Live — which counterintuitively includes on-demand video — was available through Internet-connected televisions from Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and other manufacturers, and through the Boxee and the Yahoo Connected TV platforms. It is expected to be available through Hulu soon. “Anybody who does Internet-enabled television, we’re talking to,” Mr. Murray said.
A Journal spokeswoman said the site received more than seven million views each month for its video; most of those views are for on-demand video clips.