News Stations Differ On Mobile Alerts Strategies

News managers agree that mobile alerts are a viable tool in modern media, but they disagree on how often to use them.

All three local news stations now have at least one mobile app.

40/29 News, which airs on local ABC affiliate station KHBS/KHOG-TV, offers a news app, 40/29 weather, an alarm clock app and a tornado warning app; NBC affiliate KNWA-TV/KFTA, offers a news app and separate weather app; and 5News, which airs on CBS affiliate KFSM-TV/KXNW-TV, also has a news app.

40/29 News sends out three to six mobile alerts per day, while KNWA sends about that many out in a week. And, if you ask the managers at either station, they each believe their approach is best. (5News declined an interview for this story.)

Greg Shepperd, 40/29 News director, said he does not think the volume of notifications sent out from mobile news apps is too much, and he believes the proof of the pudding is in the subscription numbers.

“It’s not uncommon to hear talk about whether stations are flooding the market with too many mobile alerts, but that’s not what the analytics show,” he said. “The business continues to grow.”

In June of last year, the 40/29 apps had about 100,000 users, and now the apps boast more than 400,000 users, Shepperd said.

Of course, app use in general has been steadily growing.

More than half of adults now own a smartphone, and 40 billion apps had been downloaded from the Apple store at the beginning of 2013, according to the latest data from the Pew Research Center.

Half of those app downloads took place in 2012, showing the industry’s exponential growth in popularity.

The KNWA app is no different, reporting continued growth each month in its subscriber base.

KNWA has offered a news app since 2010 and its users are now about 70,000, said general manager Lisa Kelsey.

But KNWA’s strategy for issuing mobile alerts is different than that of 40/29 News.

“We don’t want to be bombarding people with information,” Kelsey said. “It gets annoying. Can you imagine ‘beep, beep, beep’ all day?”

The station takes a measured approach to its mobile alerts strategy, sending out about three to seven notifications per week, said Amanda Ashley, Web content manager.

“We don’t post anything automatically. Everything is manual. Any alerts you get are sent out because we made a choice that they were newsworthy,” Ashley said. “We want there to be some news judgment to factor into what we choose to send out.”

The KNWA app sends out a daily weather report, but users can opt out of this while still receiving breaking news from the station. This includes information the news team deems pertinent to that day, Ashley said, including severe weather warnings, traffic issues and developing news on big stories.

“We try not to inundate people with alerts, because they might drop off and unfollow them,” Ashley said.

Or, they could start ignoring them, assuming they are unimportant.

“We never want people to ignore an alert that is a severe weather warning or alerts them to some danger in the community,” Ashley said. “That’s the last thing we want.”