NBC News is joining the parade of traditional news outlets trying to capture the interest of a rising generation of news junkies who get their fix with mobile devices and streaming video.
The NBCUniversal unit, which already produces broadcast programs like Meet the Press and Today, cable hours including The Rachel Maddow Show and Deadline: The White House, and the Snapchat-based Stay Tuned will now turn to broadband. Its new streaming outlet, “NBC News Signal” is slated to launch in mid-2019 and will feature original content.
Older millennials and younger Generation Xers “are hungry for news programming as anybody, and they want to consume it in a different way,” said Nick Ascheim, senior vice president for digital at NBC News Group, in an interview. “We want to meet them there.”
NBC News will vie with many entrants in the broadband space. CBS News operates video-streaming hub CBSN. ABC News seeks to give streamers the most important live news at any moment with ABC News Live. Fox News is expected to launch the subscription-video service Fox Nation in weeks to come. And then there’s Cheddar, Vice and others.
All of them are chasing viewers who have traded newspaper headlines for smartphone alerts and the evening news for on-demand video clips. The share of Americans who often get news on a mobile device – 58% – has nearly tripled since 2013, according to a report issued in July by Pew Research. In that year, only 21% of U.S. citizens did. That sharp increase has been fueled by an embrace of the technology by older Americans and lower-income families, according to the study, a sign that early adopters aren’t the only ones who have moved to a mobile-centric life.
NBC News Signal is already up and running. Its programming is available on NBCNews.com, in the NBC News mobile and OTT apps, on PlutoTV and via YouTube and Twitter. A show anchored by Simone Boyce, who came abroad in July, will move from streaming at 7 p.m. on just Thursdays to airing every weeknight at tha time, later in the current quarter. Additional daily programming, including a morning and afternoon show and hourly news updates called “Briefly’s,” will launch later this quarter and in early 2019.
