This is an exclusive blog post about local Cleveland TV. It will appear on no other blog…until someone picks up our RSS feed or links to us, of course. But at the moment we’re typing this, it’s exclusive. Honest.
FUN WITH RESERVE SQUARE: The reason our tongue is so firmly in cheek above is due to Reserve Square.
Raycom Media’s WOIO/19-WUAB/43 “19 Action News” breathlessly promoted an “exclusive” interview of Joe Jackson, father of the late Michael Jackson, on the 10 PM edition of “19 Action News” on WUAB “My 43”.
Conducting the interview was 19’s Sharon Reed – and unlike one of the last times she had an “exclusive interview”, she was actually the one asking Jackson the questions, live on set.
The interview, as of this writing late Friday morning, is still tagged on the “19 Action News” website, in bold, red letters, as a “SHARON REED EXCLUSIVE”.
Here’s our problem with Reserve Square: To them, “exclusive” apparently means “the only station interviewing Joe Jackson on Thursday night”.
For today (Friday), the father of the late King of Pop – in town for events at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and Cleveland State University – has already appeared live on Local TV Fox affiliate WJW/8’s “Fox 8 News in the Morning”, and then on Gannett NBC affiliate WKYC/3’s “Good Company Today”.
He also has a scheduled appearance later today on Scripps ABC affiliate WEWS/5’s “Live on Five”.
We haven’t checked Univision O&O WQHS/61, but we half expect him to appear in that station’s lobby for its weekend public affairs show.
Again, unless there was a chromakey effect in play, at least Sharon Reed was actually sitting next to Joe Jackson, and was actually interviewing him…but exclusive?
Jackson’s appearance in town is newsworthy because it comes on the first anniversary of his son’s death…and the Rock Hall will hold events marking that somber anniversary with Joe Jackson present. We hear the events at the Rock Hall are “exclusive”…at least as far as rock museums go…
AND DIGITAL: Those following our Twitter account know we made the round of local TV stations’ smartphone applications – with particular interest paid to the Android platform used by your Primary Editorial Voice(tm).
And as it turns out, all the Cleveland market TV news operations that have smartphone apps also have Android versions.
We already knew about, and installed, the Android version of WEWS/5’s application.
But it took reader tips to direct us to the Android app for WJW/8 “Fox 8”, and to one for WOIO/19’s “19 Action News”.
We don’t have an iPhone here at OMW World Headquarters, so we can only compare the Android versions of the above apps.
In our view, the Android “NewsNet5” application is by far the most complete, with the most news stories, video, weather radar and other features.
The “Fox 8 News” app and the “19 Action News to Go” app are actually produced by the same provider, LSN.
They’re both somewhat limited compared to the WEWS app. “Fox 8 News” only has about two or three local stories and two or three local videos. “19 Action News” has a significantly larger haul of local news stories, but no video of any sort.
And in the “it sticks in our craw” department: The “Fox 8 News” Android app, though it actually has a “Live Video” button, does not offer the station’s live video feed during local/news programming. The underlying screen says it’s for the iPhone, and clicking the video screenshot reveals – a text URL for the iPhone streaming, and nothing more.
We assume they’re working on this, or they wouldn’t have a “Live Video” button on the Android version – right?
You can pick up the “Fox 8” Android app at this link.
We include it because we had trouble finding it in the Android Market.
Searching “WJW” did not work, and searching “Fox 8” brought up two other apps in addition to the local version – including Local TV sister station WGHP/8 in the Greensboro NC market.
As you’ll note on the file description linked above, “Fox8 Flash” has no indication that it is for WJW in Cleveland.
We found the “19 Action News” app by searching for WOIO.
As far as we know, Gannett NBC affiliate WKYC/3 has no smartphone apps, though it does have a version formatted for mobile browsers (mobile link).
For our iPhone friends, we apologize for another detour into Android land, but local TV stations having iPhone apps really is not news anymore…
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