Posts Tagged ‘KC Estenson’

This is CNN … for the iPad. CNN App for iPad is now available via the iTunes Store, free-of-charge, and CNN also announced that its iPhone and iPod Touch app is now also available free, and an update will bring live breaking-news video to its international app.

CNN App for iPad offers the options of viewing in broadsheet, list view, and slide show mode, and it includes text stories, blog posts, photo galleries, and video, both live and on-demand. Users can toggle between U.S. and international, and listen to hourly audio updates from CNN Radio in U.S. mode.

Broadsheet offers up to 350 news stories in a grid format, and users can choose via headline, topic, or the Featured section. List view, much as it sounds, is a running list of headlines by topic or category. And slide show allows users to scroll and swipe across a visual presentation of the day’s headlines.

The user comment feature allows sharing of stories, images, and video via email, Facebook, and Twitter. The app is updated in real-time, and push notifications alert users to important developments.

Lexus is the launch advertiser for CNN App for iPad.

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First on WebNewser: CNN.com Live is shutting down its anchor-driven newscasts as of tomorrow.

WebNewser has learned Reggie Aqui, Nicole Lapin, Naamua Delaney and Melissa Long, the four primary anchors of CNN.com Live, are being let go as are several production staffers.

In an email, obtained by WebNewser, CNN.com SVP KC Estenson writes, CNN.com Live will shift resources, “to create a unit focused on streaming major live events, producing video packages especially for CNN.com and increasing our overall on-demand offering.”

The shift also means CNN.com will be adding several new positions “focused on original video production” before the end of the year.

Estenson’s note, after the jump…

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The relatively new head of CNN.com says readers visit the site, “more out of habit than they do out of love.” And it’s KC Estenson‘s job to try and change that.

The NYTimes’ Brian Stelter interviews Estenson and takes an up-close look at CNN.com. Stelter writes, “Last year, MSNBC drew more users but CNN kept them on the site longer. If Mr. Estenson can lower the bounce rate, he can further increase page views, potentially reaping millions more in ad dollars.”

And while their newsrooms are separated by several floors at Atlanta’s CNN Center, CNN.com and CNN TV continue to integrate their operations:

For years, the site was largely independent of the television network. CNN.com would receive video from TV crews, for instance, but only after the made-for-TV segment had been pieced together. Now, production is concurrent for each platform and stories often appear first online. Alex Wellen, an editor on the politics site of CNN.com, said that integration was a struggle.

“It’s a very complicated thing to integrate newsrooms, to change people’s job descriptions, and to establish trust across multiple platforms,” he says. “The challenge is herculean.”

Stelter writes, in 2000 former CNN News group chairman Tom Johnson said the Web would be “one of the most – if not the most – important parts” of the brand’s future. “We will be a ubiquitous service,” he said.

• Earlier: WebNewser’s interview with KC Estenson at CES…

During a Digital Hollywood panel today, CNN.com executive KC Estenson announced that CNN.com will be partnering with Facebook on inauguration day — a venture that could break records, but could also break the Internet… okay probably not, but record traffic will test the limits.

WebNewser caught up with Estenson after the panel. Estenson, who joined the network less than six months ago after seven years at Disney/ABC, explained the Facebook partnernship as well as where CNN.com is headed:

More details about the partnership on CNN’s Facebook page…

Tom Hanks insisted he wasn’t at CES solely to promote his upcoming Sony Pictures release “Angels & Demons” but rather, as repentance for choosing to buy VHS instead of a Sony Betamax, so many years ago. Hanks’ introduction of Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer got attendees laughing during a conference that has also included the pall of the global recession hanging over the consumer electronics industry.

Stringer talked about some of Sony’s new developments including Flex, a screen so thin one can squeeze it — and Stringer did. We tweeted much of the event (click here to follow us) that was held at the Venetian/Sands convention center, we’re headed now to the LVCC to catch up with CNN.com SVP and GM KC Estenson.

• Stringer: Oled tech makes screen so thin it will fold. Flex “could be the e-leader.” Squeezes Beyonce video. “Good thing Jay-Z isn’t here.”

• Stringer: Sony Web alarm clock to incorporate music, video, news headlines including, “from my alma mater CBS News.”

• Stringer: Intros Wifi cybershot camera. AT&T users get free access from 10,000 hotspots to send pictures wirelessly to blogs, other sites.

• Stringer lists the “CES 7″ initiatives including: Be be a service enhanced industry or face obsolescence & “Advance the shared experience.”

• Stringer: These are certainly challenging times. Our products need to me must-haves at affordable prices.

• Hanks is a hit as he leaves the stage. “I feel the evil forces of Samsung pulling me away. Don’t send me to the Casio hellhole.”

• Stringer about Hanks: “We’ll still be friends after the movie.” Hanks: “I’m here because you keep writing it into my contract.”

• Hanks delivers Sony-is-great speech, jokingly, begrudgingly “They write the lines but I tell the truth.”