mobile

TV’s digital executives are finding that making their companies’ digital efforts profitable is a challenging task, with the industry’s success on the TV screen the main stumbling block to finding digital solutions. “They really don’t feel the pain yet,” says Catherine Badalamente, VP of digital media at Post-Newsweek Stations.

With about 50% of its TV station sites’ traffic coming from mobile, Belo is making an aggressive shift toward restrategizing mobile content creation. “Some of what we’re doing as a company is really preparing our newsrooms to create content on mobile devices that is most relevant for the consumer and highly engaging,” says Joe Weir, VP of digital.

A TVNewsCheck survey shows that when it comes to ATSC 3.0 — the next-generation television standard — chief engineers by a nine to one margin say delivering broadcasts to mobile devices is more important than broadcasting in 4K or 3D.

The amount of time Americans spend watching “TV” via a traditional television set continues to decline, according to the latest edition of Nielsen’s quarterly Cross Platform Report. While television remains the overwhelming means most people use to watch “television,” usage of the medium declined 1.7% over the past year.

Washington all-news powerhouse WTOP’s relaunched news app, which combines a native app home page with the station’s mobile site, streamlines advertising and makes it easier for the newsroom to make changes on the fly. The app has helped boost WTOP’s mobile traffic, which now makes up 10% of its total digital traffic.

StepLeader Digital reported that mobile usage for its local news partners’ mobile sites and apps skyrocketed during coverage of Hurricane Sandy and Election Night.

Lewis DVorkin: “Journalism in the digital era requires disruptive business models. Dispensing with satellite transmission and truck delivery in favor of WiFi on planes may be part of it. So is finding a scalable model for publishing quality content that satisfies the voracious appetite of digital news consumers. Then you have to match the cost of producing it with what marketers are willing to pay.”

Steve Hasker, Nielsen’s president of global media products, said the company is looking to extend its measurement capabilities for mobile devices to include apps, which would join tracking Web browsing on tablets and smartphones.

YouTube this week said it was enabling mobile publishing for its skippable TrueView in-stream video ad format, which lets viewers skip ads after five seconds.

The reality is that most newsrooms are falling behind the news consumer when it comes to social media, Web and mobile. If we still want to be the people providing them with new and vital information then we need to first catch up, and then leap ahead.

Mobile is a beast that is never sated and to ignore it puts your company at risk of falling far behind the competition. KMOV’s Bryce Moore: “The greatest challenge (or more of a concern) for news operations is that users have frighteningly high expectations for their mobile devices and the content within them.”

Half of all mobile consumers will use devices for holiday researching and purchasing. And they’ll start doing so as early as October. So says new research from Mojiva, a moble ad network.

A new report from the Pew Research Center reaffirms that TV is still the most popular local medium overall. Viewers primarily tune in for just three things: weather, breaking news, and traffic. But the study also notes TV “might easily be replaced by mobile platforms that are even more accessible than TV.”

Adam Symson is picked to lead the digital and mobile businesses for all Scripps television stations and newspapers.

At the Associated Press Managing Editors meeting in Denver on Wednesday, Tom Curley, AP’s president-CEO, said media companies lost revenue opportunities with the Internet but have a chance to change that with mobile.

Advertisers will spend 17.8% of online ad budgets for local this year — up from 14.9%, or $13.5 billion, according to a report by Borrell Associates. The Benchmarking Local Online Media: 2010 Revenue Survey points to mobile as the catalyst driving growth.

The majority of those of who own a cellphone or tablet computer (56%) get some kind of local news and information on their mobile devices. That equates to 47% of all adults. That’s one of the findings in a new Pew Internet report.

Mobile Marketing Association CEO Greg Stuart noted that right now there are 1.5 billion computers, along with 1.8 billion smartphones and 5.5 billion cellphones, and said “Mobile is the missing link for marketers.”

The Post-Newsweek stations in Detroit and Orlando choose Harris’ MPH ATSC mobile DTV system.

A test of a single-frequency repeater in Washington this summer and fall indicates that it may be what broadcasters need to fill in coverage gaps in their mobile DTV service when they roll it out next year. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” says OMVC’s Sterling Davis (left).

CBS Sports will again simulcast a run of college hoops games gratis on the Web and mobile devices, while adding a social-media component. A series of live games from three conferences — highlighted by Kentucky-Louisville and the Big Ten championship — will be available.

With smartphone use steadily increasing in the United States, companies are preparing for the new opportunities that widespread use of mobile devices will bring.