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KRONon Launches As Subscription Based OTT Commercial Free News Service.


rkolsen

Do you think this will work in the long term?  

32 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you think this will work in the long term?

    • Yes
      4
    • No
      28


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KRONon that has been mentioned here briefly, well there are now details. It’s launching as an OTT services with $2.99/month and $29.99/year.  It’s something that the the user has never seen in TV before.

 

Heres the what they posted on their website:

 

Quote

KRONon is a revolutionary local news and streaming video subscription service for mobile, desktop, tablet and OTT platforms, including iOS, Android, Apple TV and Amazon Fire. 

 

The KRONon app is the San Francisco Bay Area's only commercial-free, 24/7 local digital news platform. In addition to live streaming video, KRONon features exclusive breaking news and in-depth coverage, clips of the day's top videos, and a searchable archive of all available content.

 

The KRONon streaming video subscription service is available now for a 7-day free trial and is priced at $2.99/month or $29.99 for an annual subscription.

 

 

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I must say it’s an innovative idea and has been done to an extent with a Scripps station and a paywall but not with video.

Will they have an anchor or reporter on call 24/7 or add additional reporters? 

I know San Francisco has a lot of news but is there enough to fill the day without having the same package repeat every hour or will it be filled with “Nexstar Nation” or CNN NewSource content? That said from what I understand CBSN NY doesn’t have enough local content to fill an extra three or for hours (in addition to scheduled newscasts), let alone an entire broadcast day. 

Will they simulcast the existing 65 hours of newscasts?

 

And last but not least in 2012-2015 they aired KRON 4 24/7 Bay Area News on a subchannels and cable? If that wasn’t viable how is this?

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Nexstar is going to want to know rather quickly whether this product is successful or not. If it is, Nexstar will likely implement that nationwide. If it's not, I expect this service to get canned within a year or two.

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1 hour ago, rkolsen said:

And last but not least in 2012-2015 they aired KRON 4 24/7 Bay Area News on a subchannels and cable? If that wasn’t viable how is this?

 

If we assume there is any demand for this, its not a bad idea. No ads means nobody is getting paid to try and sell commercial time, and it's unlikely they'd make a lot of money off that to begin with. Assuming they get 15,000 month-to-month subscribers, they'll make $45,000 gross a month before operating expenses, which could easily pay for a small team of producers and an extra (one man band) reporter or two.

 

I have my doubts this will work in the long term, but at least they are trying to stay relevant in the digital age.

 

Also, I know it's "commercial-free", but I imagine they will still sell sponsorships and make some additional revenue that way.

 

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San Fran / Silicon Valley is probably the one market you want to test first to see if this can work. And there is definitely enormous upside to try.

 

$3 a month is beyond what FOX News gets from the cable operators per subscriber and well on its way to ESPN levels. It can do a lot. Consider how many markets Nexstar is in and is about to be in, and I think even 10,000 subs would be cause for a national rollout. Law of averages says Nexstar could make a lot of money...if they put some effort into original content.

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1 hour ago, rkolsen said:

And last but not least in 2012-2015 they aired KRON 4 24/7 Bay Area News on a subchannels and cable? If that wasn’t viable how is this?

It was before that as Young loved having 24/7 news/weather channels before the DRTV split that the regular entertainment subchannels give out made it a losing proposition, so it was more just industry trends rather than anything else that did it in. WBAY still maintains their Young-era weather channel, but it obviously has enough viewership/ad buy to remain on the air (plus running a Windows 7 'channel-in-a-box' outside of the few Windows Updates per year basically makes it a low-dollar investment with a good return).

 

This actually seems like a reasonable service though, and $30/year is a fair price. Scripps really just offered ad-blocking, and I never really could justify paying their cost to do so for WTMJ (and it really didn't help that WTMJ Radio's site posting the same stories basically served as a loophole around their paywall). I'd love to see how another Nexstar station implements it before it goes wide for a compare-contrast.

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21 minutes ago, Weeters said:

 

 

If we assume there is any demand for this, its not a bad idea. No ads means nobody is getting paid to try and sell commercial time, and it's unlikely they'd make a lot of money off that to begin with. Assuming they get 15,000 month-to-month subscribers, they'll make $45,000 gross a month before operating expenses, which could easily pay for a small team of producers and an extra (one man band) reporter or two.

 

I have my doubts this will work in the long term, but at least they are trying to stay relevant in the digital age.

 

Also, I know it's "commercial-free", but I imagine they will still sell sponsorships and make some additional revenue that way.

 

2

I mean looking at the polls the no's are clearly winning (it's not even close) but if it's working for KRON and for Nexstar then by all means, great. It doesn't matter how much you charge the consumer to sign up for a streaming service but at the end of the day, I need to see how good of the news product is and what things might need to be tweaked in order for it to be successful.

 

I'm sure CBS is learning as we go with the localized versions of CBSN and finding out what's working and what's not. That's why it has not expanded beyond New York as of yet.

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It's a bold venture for a downtrodden bottom-feeder station in a large market.  Maybe the locals will eat it up.  30 bucks a year in San Francisco is like 10 dollars everywhere else with the sky-high cost of living...

 

Meanwhile, the rest of Nexstar could use some love in the OTT department...they are way behind the 8-ball in live streaming and putting said streams in OTT delivery like Amazon and Roku...

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It's an interesting idea, and I think maybe there's some station out there that can pull it off. But that one station is definitely not KRON. I would be surprised if they get a significant number of subscribers to sign up.

 

What exactly is this idea? They're putting a paywall on their live stream and running CNN Newsource packages and live traffic cameras with news music in the breaks. There's a new 7 pm sports talk show, but there doesn't appear to be much new local content being produced for this project.

 

Is that really worth $3 a month, especially given that KRON's newscasts already suffer in quality in the first place? I doubt KRON's demographic is young enough or cares enough to want to pay for what's already an inferior product.

 

This will probably last because it doesn't look like it's requiring any extra resources. There will certainly be some people who will sign up, but this seems like a dubious business and content strategy at best.

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So at the end of the 10 pm news, they teased that live coverage would continue at 11. The screen stayed black with the ticker running for several minutes until I tuned away. I tuned back in around 12:30 to find Catherine Heenan tossing to various local and national packages from a flash cam. There was weather, but it was taped.

 

Screen-Shot-2019-02-14-at-12-39-29-AM.pn

 

There's also new music being used on KRONon for some of the interstitial animations. It's one of those Stephen Arnold themes, but I can't tell the difference between them. The classic KRON music is still being used in the newscasts.

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5 hours ago, C Block said:

So at the end of the 10 pm news, they teased that live coverage would continue at 11. The screen stayed black with the ticker running for several minutes until I tuned away. I tuned back in around 12:30 to find Catherine Heenan tossing to various local and national packages from a flash cam. There was weather, but it was taped.

 

Screen-Shot-2019-02-14-at-12-39-29-AM.pn

 

There's also new music being used on KRONon for some of the interstitial animations. It's one of those Stephen Arnold themes, but I can't tell the difference between them. The classic KRON music is still being used in the newscasts.

 

I tuned in for a short period and I think it was Aerial. Listen to the noon open of WAWV on NMSA and you'll hear that cut again.

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It definitely sounds like a cool and fascinating concept, and ripe for a high subscriber base and great success if done right (on-sceen and consistently). Even if it is KRON (and has an unbelievably strange name in KRONon, I'm still willing to give it a shot (with the trial of course). And if I like it, it has a subscriber in me (for a few months or a year depending on how much I like it).

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This idea, if done successfully, may make it's way to other markets. I wouldn't be surprised if Nexstar does refocus CLTV (WGN's 24/7 news channel) into something similar to KRONon. Then again, we all said that NewsChannel 8 would be rolled out nationwide and look what happened.

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Oh so now they want me to pay for "extended coverage" ?

 

What extra resources is KRON adding to the crack news gathering operation it once kinda was.

Show me some real added value...not the same old crap.

 

I bet I would pay the fee if they still had  "People Behaving Badly" with Stanley Roberts, but they kinda blew that franchise.

KRON will need to run exclusive, original, compelling and trendsetting content that can only happen if they spend some money...lot's of money.

 

I'm Out!

 

 

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1751650966_kronmug93.thumb.jpg.44e384c4b4e3039deb692ea0bfa565bd.jpg

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