Broadcasting & Cable: Watchup

Broadcasting & Cable magazine included Watchup in a feature-length piece about the technology improvements news organizations are making to attract viewers during the election year ahead.

The article highlights how Watchup is appealing to the “on-demand generation” with custom-curated newscasts that pull from a wide range of news sources and are made available to users on mobile and OTT platforms.

From the article…

The app allows users to personalize a news feed made up of clips from a variety of sources that include national, global and local news. …

Watchup’s founder and CEO, Adriano Farano contended that their users aren’t that interested in live feeds. “We talk to users all the time and there isn’t a user demand for it,” in most cases, he said. “Younger audiences don’t understand the format of the long-form newscast anymore and don’t understand live TV either. Live TV often lacks the level of density that the on-demand generation is used to from products like Pandora, Spotify and Netflix.”

In recently months he added that they’ve been working to improve the way they can automate and personalize the delivery of on-demand news content to users. As part of that effort, they plan to add more finely defined feeds that would let users get content based on candidates and parties in the upcoming months.

While the app started on mobile and still doesn’t have a website, connected TV’s have become a more important focus. They have already launched on some gaming consoles and work is currently being done on a version of their app for Apple TV. “More than half of our traffic now comes from over-the-top,” Farano said.

Read the full article at BroadcastingCable.com.