A combination of entertaining story selection, casual presentation, and cool design make MiamiHerald.com's new video program an instant success -- at least in my book. It's been around a while but I'm just noticing.

The thing I never liked about the now deceased TimesCast was its lack of content. The TimesCast was a LinkFest and not much more. Now here comes MiamiHerald.com with "What the 5?," which links to the day's five most interesting stories, some of which are produced by the show, others of which are links anywhere on the Web.

The presentation is also cool, taking TimesCast's idea of providing links to stories to a new level and then bringing the show's production quality up a notch, too. It's like these folks combined linky-funny TimesCast with swanky-newsy Studio55, and then mixed in an editor who feels the pulse of the audience.

Many have pointed out that the concept is awfully similar to Yahoo's "The 9," which I know nothing about, except that it isn't local.

The best thing you can do is stop reading and instead go watch "What the 5?" Many of the kinks from launch are worked out. So if you've seen it before, then you'll probably be relieved to find they're recording much more B-roll, the set has changed, and the streaming works.