Friday, November 17, 2006
Launch Day Coverage: Double-Edged Sword?
Posted by Darius Wey in "Zune Talk" @ 10:30 AM
"A couple of clips are circulating containing morning show coverage of Zune's Tuesday launch. The first, from NBC (which has long-standing strategic partnerships with Microsoft relating to MSNBC) where the Zune was held up several times next to an older, non-video enabled and grey-scale screened iPod and still drew a bit of disdain from the cheerful Al Roker. Roker called the Zune Store, "a little more unwieldy than the iTunes Store" and said that wireless sharing wasn't for him."
There's been a bit of talk lately about Zune's launch day coverage doing nothing more than hurting itself. On one hand, Microsoft really wants to get the word out there that Zune is here and a viable alternative to the iPod. On the other hand, it's worked against them. Some reviews have put it in a negative light, and launch day coverage by mainstream media, for the most part, has had an opposite effect - more focus on the iPod, and less on Zune (take this CNN video, for example). All that is understandable. No one took the Xbox seriously when it was released, yet look at it now. The Zune may follow a similar path. We'll see.
There's been a bit of talk lately about Zune's launch day coverage doing nothing more than hurting itself. On one hand, Microsoft really wants to get the word out there that Zune is here and a viable alternative to the iPod. On the other hand, it's worked against them. Some reviews have put it in a negative light, and launch day coverage by mainstream media, for the most part, has had an opposite effect - more focus on the iPod, and less on Zune (take this CNN video, for example). All that is understandable. No one took the Xbox seriously when it was released, yet look at it now. The Zune may follow a similar path. We'll see.
