Despite no official word from Apple Monday at its developer conference in San Francisco, it seems like the company has inadvertently confirmed that the next Apple TV will have something its predecessor doesn’t: an App Store.
Google and Apple want software developers to give TVs and set-top boxes the same creativity on those screens as they have on smartphones. The Wall Street Journal‘s Don Clark and Alastair Barr report on a Silicon Valley race to bring more levels of interactivity to the TV experience. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.
Capitol Broadcasting-owned CBS affiliate WRAL Raleigh, N.C. (DMA 25), has given its popular local sports app a major league makeover with the release of a new version to Apple iTunes […]
Furthering the ticket vendor’s goal of being a bigger destination for sports fans, StubHub has struck a content distribution deal with ESPN. The sports programming giant will feed scores, team stats and articles to StubHub’s apps.
Amazon on Thursday launched an advertising platform for mobile app developers wanting to distribute their Android apps through Amazon’s Appstore and Google Play. Advertise Your App with Amazon lets developers promote apps across Amazon’s network through placements on the Amazon Mobile Ad Network to create awareness and drive installations. The ads appear on phone and tablet screens, including the Fire tablet wakescreen.
Fans have long shunned piracy of live sporting events in favor of gathering around the TV, but now live-streaming apps such as Periscope and Meerkat threaten TV’s golden egg. That stunning recognition arrived this past weekend when droves of boxing fans skipped the $100 pay-per-view fee and watched the much-anticipated match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao free Saturday evening.
Exclusives
Watchup Lets Mobile Users Build Newscasts
The app generates customized newscasts for consumers who have registered their preferences on everything from location to topics of interest. Broadcasters on board include the Tribune, Meredith, Scripps, Bonten and Lilly station groups and Cowles-owned KHQ Spokane, Wash.
The new, personal, live-streaming video apps — Periscope by Twitter and Meerkat by Life on Air Inc. — will likely get dragged by their inventive and fanatical users into a copyright and piracy minefield in Washington and the courts.
Michael Boord, director of mobile products at The Associated Press, describes the organization’s design approach to the Apple Watch. He says breaking news notifications will be joined by top story glances, and its functionality includes force touch to save stories for later and hand-off functionality.
Worldnow has introduced Worldnow OTT Gateway, the company’s complete over-the-top platform and experience app studio for connected devices. The company said OTT Gateway “provides a one-stop solution to quickly launch […]
Don’t want to use Meerkat simply because the buzz and the name offend? Here are four alternatives, from Twitter’s new Periscope to Stre.am, Livestream and Ustream, running through the major attributes, pros and cons of each. A great primer for newsrooms on the live streaming options.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A live-streaming app called Meerkat, calls to online activism and pedicabs with a “Game of Thrones” Iron throne seat were the top topics of conversation at […]
Google’s acquisition of InMobi for $1 billion would solidify its position as the top player in mobile application ad installations and advertising. The combination of the two companies, reportedly in talks, would turn Google into a powerhouse, leaving Facebook in the dust.
ABC News Rolls Out App for Xbox One
NBC Adds Live TV Everywhere
Stations Missing Mobile Opportunity In Apps
If broadcasters really want to own mobile, they need to harness and harvest consumers’ infatuation with constantly having their smartphones in hand, writes Neal Augenstein. The reporter and tech editor for WTOP-FM Washington says his own attempt was through an engagement app that lets people listen to the station and browse its site with easy UGC opportunities.
New features of the iPhone apps include interactive radar and quicker access to breaking news.
NBC Owned Television Stations unveiled its upgraded iPhone apps today with features like interactive radar, quick access to breaking news and the capability to send video from a mobile device to a television. The upgrades are the result of a rapid increase in digital mobile traffic that NBC owned-and-operated stations were seeing and comes just over a year after the company, a division of NBCUniversal, announced it was bringing its Web and app development in-house.
Entertainment Studios Inc. has reached an agreement with AT&T U-verse TV to make its Justice Central.TV cable television network available on the U-verse App for tablets and smartphones. Justice Central.TV […]
WDRB Louisville Adds Music To Its TV Brand
WDRB, the Block Communications-owned Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky., says radio is music to its ears. Last week the station launched two free music apps: WDRB Classic Hits and WDRB Hot Country. “We wanted to get into radio without the expense of a transmitter and tower,” says Bill Lamb, WDRB’s general manager. “And we’ve pre-sold six-figures worth of advertising dollars already.”
Alibaba’s push into Hollywood is picking up steam. The enormous Chinese e-commerce company, which recently posted a world-record initial public offering in the U.S., has invested $50 million in Peel, maker of a smart remote app for televisions.
The E.W. Scripps Co. has acquired WeatherSphere, a provider of weather apps. WeatherSphere, which now has eight iPhone apps and two for Android, including NOAA High-Def Radar, RadarCast, NOAA Snow Forecast and WeatherAlerts, will be used to leverage enhanced radar technology into Scripps’ existing Storm Shield, a paid national weather app geared at providing emergency alerts.
Viewers Use New App To Track Weather
The StormPins weather crowdsourcing app turns viewers into “junior meteorologists” by letting them mark, or “pin,” severe weather, as well as the damage it leaves behind, with photos and video on neighborhood maps so other folks know what’s heading their way. Emily Barr, CEO of Graham Media, is such a big believer in StormPins that the company invested in the app. “It really allows local television stations to build a kind of sense of community and reinforce the idea that viewers get to contribute.”
Consumers who like a local news roundup — but can only deal with so many different apps — now have a new on-the-go option. LSN Mobile’s Local on the Go, a market-by-market aggregator offering local news, weather and sports, launched today in the Apple app store, providing users info from more than one local source, all in one place.
KTSF Launches Nielsen-Measured Mobile TV App
KTSF, an independent, full-power station targeting Asian Americans in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market (DMA 6), today launched its local TV App in the Apple App Store and fully implemented […]
Post-Newsweek Stations’ NBC affiliate WDIV Detroit (DMA 11) released a new app today, called Local 4 StormPins, which will give users severe weather and breaking news information — in real […]
