WCCO Mobile should trade $$$ for viewers
Do you love WCCO News so much that you would pay a monthly fee to have it delivered to your cell phone? Yesterday, WCCO launched their WCCO Wireless service, which features news, weather, traffic, sports and video. But it’ll cost you.
I use my awesome Sprint A900 to check my Gmail (for free), my Hotmail (for free), access NFL Mobile to check on Vikings scores (for free), check Weather.com (for free), look up phone numbers/maps on Mobile Yellow Book (for free), check national news on CNN, USA Today, Reuters, ABCNews.com (for free) and indeed, check out local weather, sports and news via “Local Wireless” FOR FREE.
See, I already pay Sprint $15/mo. for high-speed internet on my phone, and there’s no way I’m paying WCCO $5/mo. on top of that.
As the first local news station to launch a mobile platform, WCCO missed out on an opportunity to reach early adopters like myself who 1). Never watch the local news because we’re never home and/nor have the TV tuned to a local station; and 2). Don’t really care from whom the news comes.
Convenience and cost are the keys these days, and by offering branded local mobile news to viewers for free, WCCO would not only have a unique “in” with a niche audience, but they could tell their broadcast advertisers that WCCO has become the trusted newsource of a new generation who don’t care about talking heads reading scripts at 6 o’clock.
If you’re still interested and have the money to burn, prices below:
–Sprint is $3.99 a month (without video) and $4.99 a month (with video).
–Verizon is 2.99 a month (without video, which is not available).
The Web site to sign up is here. Me? I’ll go without and wait for KARE 11 to offer it for free.
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Lame, WCCO. Lame.
That’s really good to know. I’m about to switch from Sprint to Verizon, get a new phone, all that jazz. Can’t/won’t cough up for the Blackberry, so this is the next best thing. Thanks!
There’s no freaking way I’d pay freaking WCCO for that shit. They’ve got to be kidding. I’d think anybody who would be savvy enough to get all that on their phone would know better than to pay ‘CCO for it.