The ABC-owned stations are launching a new iPhone app — one branded for each station — that blends the utility of an alarm clock with news, weather and custom wake-up alarms. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” says KTRK-TV anchor Sharron Melton after a burst of news music. “Rise and shine you wonderful person you.” In the Houston market app we tested, you could also hear wake-up messages from anchors Tom Koch, Casey Curry and Don Nelson. Or if you prefer, a bout of breaking news music to turbocharge your morning.
The app offers a very clean, simple weather forecast (powered by Accuweather) as well as a few short news updates. “The Alarm Clock app is ideal for the growing numbers who turn to the small screens of an iPhone or an iPod touch first thing in the morning for news and information,” explains Carla Carpenter, SVP of Digital Media for the ABC Owned Television Stations Group.
We noticed the app was filed in the “utility” category in the App Store, so I asked Carpenter about the strategy to create a utility instead of another news app:
“As a long time news director, I’m always up for creating spaces for news but we felt our next step should be in something that is useful beyond the information an app can provide. An alarm app represents the perfect marriage of news content (which includes weather and traffic) and usefulness. Members of the ABC OTV Digital group saw examples everywhere, including in their own lives, of the viability of a news app that offered an alarm for wake ups. We think of this as another level of service that we can offer our users.”
KTRK-TV’s “ABC13 Houston Alarm Clock” is now available for download, with the other seven ABC-owned TV stations rolling out in the next few weeks.