If you want to see your family and friends on TV, Vizio has just the thing. The smart TV maker unveiled Viziogram, a feature that lets people share photos and video with other Vizio TV set owners. The feature is available through Vizio’s redesigned mobile app. The pictures are rendered in high definition and can be sent to a TV from a mobile phone.
TVN webinar to explore how broadcasters can diversify digital revenue streams
Station groups can capitalize on shifts in the mobile advertising landscape by building in a subscription revenue stream, according to executives from The Weather Company, who will appear on a TVNewsCheck webinar on April 27 at 3 p.m. ET. The event will examine how the Max Mobile white label app that many broadcasters offer their followers can use artificial intelligence to invite, at just the right time based on user behavior, an upgrade to premium. Join us by registering here.
TVN Focus On Digital | TV Station CMSs Streamline And Simplify
Content management systems are the workhorses of local stations’ digital operations. Executives from Tegna, NBCU, CBS, Gray, Nexstar and Fox have discovered that user simplicity and integrations for multiplatform distribution have become essential attributes. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.
TVN Special Report | TV’s Mobile Apps Embrace Customization, Notifications
When it comes to mobile apps, broadcasters still face a range of options from a single- or multiple-app approach to adopting back-end tech allowing user personalization. But some goals remain constant: keeping users on owned-and-operated mobile platforms over social and monetizing the experience wherever possible.
Exclusives
New tools are making it easier for viewers to submit video — and transfer rights — to TV stations. Groups like Gray and Tegna say simplified UGC has boosted engagement, and expanded coverage without increasing staff. Above, user-generated content appeared throughout Gray Television’s WECT Wilmington, N.C.’s coverage of the Surf City Fire story last year. (Source: Jacob Robert Younce)
Further illustrating the hot demand for the November debut of the Disney+ streaming service, mobile industry analytics firm Sensor Tower said the Disney+ mobile app was downloaded for iOS and Android devices around 31 million times in the fourth quarter.
The social network is pitching an initiative to license articles from some of the largest American news publishers for its mobile app, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
How Broadcasters Can Reach Young Viewers
“You can no longer just be a broadcaster,” says SmithGeiger’s Andrew Finlayson. “You have to go beyond that.” In addition to offering content across digital and social media platforms, broadcasters, particularly TV stations, need to create and promote the usage of mobile apps, both for entertainment content and local news. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
Ninety percent of local news organizations in the nation’s biggest markets have mobile apps, so why aren’t they making the most of them? Amy Schmitz Weiss, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University, examined which news organizations are using geolocated news and the type of content is being geolocated.
Nielsen says its Digital Ad Ratings will now provide cross-device measurement of advertising audiences on YouTube across all computers and mobile devices.
The free, 24-hour channel will provide child-friendly fare during primetime and other periods that draw kids, said Paula Kerger, PBS CEO. Member stations now get up to 12 hours daily of kids’ programming from PBS. The service also will be available online as a live stream on the pbskids.org website and on the PBS Kids video app for mobile devices and platforms such as Roku and Apple TV.
Mobile Graphics: Can You See Me Now?
CJ&N’s Steve Schwaid: “We’ve been monitoring station feeds as they head into winter storms and we see one constant. The [mobile app] maps with snow/rain totals are almost impossible to see. Stations are taking weather maps from their broadcast air or from the weather computer made for the broadcast and are just sticking them in the feed. Some folks assume that if it looks good on the PC/Weather monitor, it’ll look OK on a 4.5 inch phone screen. That doesn’t work.”
Weather Tech: Mobile With A Chance of AR
For broadcasters, the big payoff from mobile and social media comes when viewers tune in to watch the local weathercast. When they do, they’ll find several new presentation and forecasting tools that make weather on the big screen even more accurate and easy to understand. One impressive new presentation tool finding its way into weather and traffic reports is augmented reality, or AR. Above, KWTV Oklahoma City displays wind shear warnings using Baron Services tech. This is the final installment of a three-part special report on weather. Read all the stories here.
Calkins Media and its Chief Digital Officer Guy Tasaka have retooled its Amazon Fire OTT app to allow for more monetization and discovery opportunities. It has also overhauled its mobile app at WWSB Tampa, Fla., resulting in a 900% increase in video views. The revamped version has since been rolled out at Calkins’ WAAY Huntsville, Ala., and WTXL Tallahassee, Fla.
It will use WiOffer’s WiO cross-platform mobile app to supply offers, savings and information anytime, anywhere from national or hyper-local brands. WiO will be promoted across 20th Television’s shows, and features voice recognition, text and ACR (audio content recognition) technologies, allowing viewers to interact with advertiser brands.
NBC has pushed live streaming to its mobile app, which means you can watch shows as they’re being aired — so long as you meet certain conditions.
Many publishers have developed mobile apps that deliver a better user experience than their mobile websites. Getting people to use your app instead of your mobile website can increase user engagement with your publication.Here are some tactics to drive traffic to mobile apps.
TiVo Inc. is introducing a mobile application for users to stream TV content on their Android smartphones and tablets, adding to a similar service it offers on Apple devices. The new app, initially being introduced in the U.S., lets consumers with devices using Google’s operating software connect to their TiVo set-top box at home to watch live shows, record and playback content on the go. The app can connect with mobile phone networks as well as Wi-Fi, unlike the Apple app, which is Wi-Fi only.
U.S. users are now spending the majority of their time consuming digital media within mobile applications, according to a new study released by comScore. That means mobile apps, including the most popular app Facebook, eat up more of our time than desktop use or mobile Web surfing, accounting for 52% of the time spent using digital media. Combined with mobile Web, mobile use as a whole accounts for 60% of time spent, while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up the remaining 40%.
KTBS Expands Live News Coverage With Dejero
ABC affiliate KTBS Shreveport, La. (DMA 82), has expanded its live electronic newsgathering capabilities with Dejero LIVE+ 20/20 transmitters. In addition, KTBS will soon deploy the Dejero LIVE+ mobile app […]
CNBC is now letting biz-news junkies watch live programming on Apple iOS devices, but customers of two of the biggest subscription TV services won’t be able to access the service for now.
Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM) has introduced mobile apps for iOS and Android platforms that can be rapidly deployed by its client base of hundreds of television station websites. “Since we […]
Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings will provide demographic data for tablet and smartphone media. ABC will be able to measure audience demographics and understand the reach and frequency of online campaigns across ABC content on the Web and in mobile apps.
Stations are trying to keep up with a rapidly changing television marketplace, where consumers are increasingly watching video online and via mobile devices. Broadcasters want to get the content that appears on their stations onto mobile devices before others do, according to a Wall Street Journal story today. WSJ subscribers may read the story here.
A group of TV digital executives speaking Monday at the NAB Show said that mobile should be the industry’s top digital priority today and shared their own mobile revenue plays, including rich media, sponsored content and social media.
Meredith Making The Most Of Mobile
Stephen Lacy, the company’s CEO, says “approximately 30% of the [digital] traffic we generate is coming from mobile and tablet devices.” The company has looked to take advantage of that audience by introducing a series of mobile-specific site apps.
Connecting Privacy Policies And Mobile Apps
The privacy practices of mobile apps have been under scrutiny from a wide variety of domestic and foreign regulatory authorities of late. Most recently, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris issued a press release regarding a new enforcement effort aimed at bringing mobile Apps into compliance with California’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Now available for download in the Apple iTunes App Store, the Dejero LIVE+ Mobile App enables broadcasters to go live from an iPhone or iPad using multiple wireless connections.
For here on out, Capitol Broadcasting’s supplier of mobile apps and smart TV technology will be known as StepLeader and it will be under the director of online advertiser veteran Brian Handly.
Prohibition, a new three-part documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, will debut on PBS’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch apps before its television premiere.
Downloads Are No Measure For App Success
Stuart Dredge: “Download numbers are no guide to how much money is being made. They don’t tell you how many apps are being sold, and they can only give an indication of the potential an app has for making money from in-app purchases and/or advertising.”
Hearst’s NBC affiliate WDSU New Orleans (DMA 52) has introduced its latest mobile app, Hurricane Central. Available for free download on both the Android and iPhone platforms, the Hurricane Central app […]
Broadcasting’s Future Is All About Mobile
The demand for mobility has been with us since the dawn of electronic mass media. Makers of receivers have been trying to pack more and more capabilities into smaller packages ever since crystal radios were the rage. And it will be the largest part of television’s future. Smart phones will gradually replace all the dumb phones and everybody with have a TV receiver in their pocket or purse. Broadcasters are in a perfect position to feed these personal TV sets — but only if they hang on to their spectrum.
