Google Home

I’m finding my new Google Home Mini is more than a novelty. It’s another platform for accessing media — and it’s as a media platform that it interests me most. That’s what should interest TV broadcasters as creators of mostly news content. Some broadcasters have already plunged in. More need to experiment because these devices aren’t going away — eMarketer predicts that by 2019 there will be 54.4 million “smart speakers” in use in the U.S.

eMarketer estimates Amazon Echo has a 70.6% share f the voice-enabled digital assistant marketplace,followed by Google Home (23.8%) and everyone else (5.6%).

The Raleigh, N.C., NBC affiliate says the move will make it the first local news station on Google’s smart speaker.

NBC News, CNBC, NPR One, HuffPost and The Wall Street Journal are among the media companies launching actions on the device, which came on the market as a competitor to Amazon Echo.