The Seattle Post-Intelligencer began dayparting today, says Brian Chin, in his seattlepi.com Buzzworthy blog.
Dayparting is when the site dramatically changes during the day to appeal to different audiences. Newspapers are attracted to dayparting to counter their traffic pattern of heavy use in the morning and then falling off the rest of the day. News has strong draw in the morning. Entertainment and shopping sites draw better in the afternoon and evening. Here’s Seattle P-I’s daypart schedule.
Fark, for example, has heavy traffic after 4 p.m. when people have finished their work for the day, but it’s not time to leave yet.
Dayparting is a new concept to newspaper web sites. It’s ancient history for TV networks. The TV guys, says it’s further proof that newspaper sites will be more like TV in the future.