King TV is a Seattle’s NBC television news outlet. They have been advertising an iPhone app on their web site and on air. I downloaded it for free and used it. It is functional but faulty in a few areas. I’d give it a B-.
When I searched for it in the Apple App store I keyed in KING5, like their logo. There was no result. Puzzled, I tried KING 5 and the app turned up. When I went back a few days later the search turned up the app with or without the space.
The opening page flashes the station logo briefly before going to the opening screen. It begins an ‘Election Results’ page. ‘Election Results’ is also the first tab on the bottom of the page. I found this a curious default open. It’s more than 2 ½ weeks since the election. It’s been off the front pages for some time. I can see having it there, but not in the opening position.
The second tab is ‘News’ which features a vertical listing of stories with a photo beside each. Clicking on the story opens up a text version. Most of the stories are from King 5, but there are also some from their news partner, the Seattle Times. This is the most useful part of the app. King is the strongest local TV station for news. Being able to jump in and check stories is very handy.
I did notice that at 6 pm in the evening the most recently updated story had a time code of 10:54 am. That gave me the impression the app was not being regularly updated. But I checked the web site and it had the same stories, albeit without the time code featured prominently. An ad appeared at the bottom of the page and an option to email or save the story while along the top there was navigation menu. Scrolling down the story swept away the top and bottom menus so you could read more easily, but left the ad. When you are ready to navigate away, you tap the screen and the navigation bars reappear.
The third tab is ‘Video’ with a list of stories in ‘News’, ‘Health’, and ‘Sports’ categories. The stories appeared in streaming video but there was no audio from the iPhone speaker. After trying a couple of times I realized that audio was only available through earphones. This is different from other apps I have used with audio. I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t play through the speaker.
The video was low quality but adequate. It streamed easily over the 3G network. The screen turned to panorama mode when I turned the phone to side. But the other menus do not go to panorama view in response to re-orienting the phone. This led to a discontinuous user experience. I would have to turn the phone every time I went from watching video in panorama orientation to the menu.
The video menu also offered the option of saving the story or emailing it.
The fourth tab is ‘Weather’ which opens up four menu items. A lengthy text forecast, a Doppler weather map, a five day forecast, and views from KING 5’s live cams of downtown, the waterfront, and SeaTac. This evening when I looked the SeaTac cam was out. All I could see was a blue screen. I found it about as useful as the AP app weather option, but the AP app costs $1.99
The ‘More’ option offers detailed traffic information with incident reports, drive times between major destinations, something called ‘Jam Factor’, and the Seattle/Bridges traffic map with color codes showing the level on congestion on major arteries. This is a very useful tool if you’re on the go during busy traffic times.
Also under ‘More’ is an entertainment guide with upcoming events; a ‘Local Events’ tab which featured concerts (two concert listings had the start time at 12:00 am, apparently an oversight), ‘Sports’ with sports stories; ‘Cars’ which linked to ‘Car Reviews’ and ‘Buy a Car’ which takes the user to the Cars.com com’s web site (the site is not very helpful for a mobile users because it’s not designed for mobile use. Confusingly it asks you to download the Cars.com mobile app while you’re on the King 5 mobile app).
The final listing under ‘More’ is ‘Your News’ where King 5 asks you to send them a photo, video, or email. The photo or video can either be already recorded or you can record it. The app then opens up an email addressed to King 5 with your photo or video in it. You can add a note and hit send.
If users get down to the ‘Your News’ level this could be a great tool for King 5 to leverage user generated content on breaking stories they have not gotten a camera crew out to yet. It could also provide added context to a large event where King 5 cameras can’t be everywhere.
One final note on the advertisements. They were generally unobtrusive except for the ads urging you to download the King 5 iPhone app while you’re using the King 5 iPhone app. Hunh?
Generally I found this tool useful. A quick survey of other local TV stations suggests King 5 is the first in the mobile app arena with a respectable product. This first mover position could really help them moving forward.
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Good review! It seems odd that traffic, one of the things might be most interested in while out-and-about is relegated to the ‘More’ section. Seems like it would come before video, particularly if the video experience is so middle-of-the-road.