By Zoë Agnew
This site focuses on Discovery Channel and lives within the
overall structure of Discovery.com. The obvious focus of the site
is Discovery Channel's programming, and so the site must cover
the wide range of Discovery's popular programming from The
New Detectives, a forensics evidence show, to the Christopher
Lowell Show, a program on home decorating.
Presumably, the target audience for this site are frequent and enthusiastic
Discovery Channel viewers. Prominently displayed on the home
page are links to tonight's and this week's television programming
on the Discovery Channel. There are also links to affiliated
channels, like The Learning Channel and Animal Planet.
Another main focus of the site are subsites, or "Fan Sites"
of particular shows. Two of the channel's most popular shows are The
FBI Files and The New Detectives, two crime-investigation
shows. This site affords a great opportunity to offer users far greater
depth of information than an hour-long show could ever provide. For
example, the collection of forensic evidence is a complicated and
compelling subject on which the site could offer a wealth of information.
However, the site falls well short of this potential. Within The
New Detectives area, I clicked on the Investigator's Toolbox hoping
for a profusion of forensic tools and their descriptions. Unfortunately,
there were only two tools listed. The descriptions themselves were
fairly interesting, but still fell far short of the mark. Not only
did the author's writing style suffer a bit from not knowing their
audience - 12-year old working on a report? 30 year-old relaxing after
work? - but they also failed to include any links to further information.
The organization of the entire site is clearly intended to entice
viewers to watch more Discovery shows more often. That is to
be expected on a TV channel's home page. They do an excellent job
of organizing a person's potential TV viewing habits for the evening
and for the week. What the site falls far short of is offering the
user an authentic depth of information that complements their programming.