Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

New Zealand's TV3 had a 'soft' relaunch today of its website. The CanWest MediaWorks channel has unveiled a major revamp of its site, offering a much wider range of News and other video clips, as well as more interaction with browsers.

The main page is dominated by news... Items from 3News and Campbell Live (with video clips and/or pictures) are now mixed with stories coming in from RadioLive throughout the day.

The new site breaks down news stories into different section, including Sports, Entertainment & Arts, and Business News. It also offers a live stream of the 6pm news, which is replaced at other times by a Weekly News Wrap programme.

TV3's new site now also offers localised weather forecasts, movie reviews, competitions, gig guides, streaming radio stations, and more detailed programming information and schedules for TV3.


There are however a few teething problems with the new site. A few people seem to be having problems viewing the video clips now (no video, just audio), and there's some layout issues with browsers like Firefox. This is probably to be expected with a major revamp like this, but it would be nice to see web designers fully road testing sites in more than just Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

On the whole its a big improvement, and puts TV3 in a much better position, with state broadcaster TVNZ set unveil a revamped version of its site sometime in the new year.

* TV3 New Zealand website