finally-thumbs-down-things-you-dislike-facebook.1280x600.jpg

FTVLive has been going on forever about how TV stations should stop putting so much weight into Facebook.

Many stations spend money on contests and pull out all stops to try and get viewers to "like" them on Facebook. A digital property that they don't own or control.

We wondered why these stations don't spend as much time promoting their own website and trying to get viewers to go there instead of Facebook?

Well, it now looks like someone is starting to get what FTVLive has been saying for years.

The Weather Channel says that they are no longer publishing videos to Facebook.

“[Facebook video] hasn’t been beneficial,” said Neil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel, during a speech at the Digiday Video Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It has been good for Facebook, but it hasn’t been good for us.”

The Weather Channel built up a network of six pages on Facebook that grew to 500 million video views per month by last May, according to Katz.

“We went along for the ride every single step of the way,” Katz said. “But we noticed, over the course of two years, that we were being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money.”

“That was a wake-up call to let us know that though this was a fun adventure, it was not a business,” Katz said.

It's great to see that The Weather Channel has finally got what FTVLive has been saying.

Hopefully, other networks and stations will follow The Weather Channel's lead.

H/T Digiday