We especially like this app while traveling. It keeps us up on what's going on in our community while in other parts of the country. We like the alerts of breaking news. Additionally, until we get out of our Direct TV contract, we rely on the app for daily, current news. Thank you for making the app available.
Wow, done with this app. First it was adds popping up with every page, now it crashes when you try and open the weather! Doesn't anyone who works there try their own stuff to make sure it works? Pure junk, plus, stop publishing CNN opinion stories as if they are real news. Update: well, it was good for awhile. When it was updated, I tried again. It was working for for me to get my news, now back to political hit pieces via cnn. Can’t we just have news? Who cares what the First Lady wears? And how she is awful at choosing outfits compared to last First Lady? Come on, just news please. If I wanted cnn I would just download their app. Be creative and focus on Bend, and just report what happens. Come together and stand out as a news source that unites instead of choosing sides with obvious bias from those who work at z21. Its deleted from my platform once more. I hope that some one is reading and can be an adult who is ok with listing and learning from all people, not those who just agree with the beat of the cnn drum.
Most of the stories they "report" are contrite, containing one or two paragraphs that say next to nothing. It's a small news source pretending to be a big one and fails miserably. When the report something, there's hardly any meat to the story, leaving you wanting more. It they don't provide it. Basically, they put fillers in so it looks like they're reporting more than they actually do. Bunch of rank amateurs who know nothing about how to report...who, what, where, why, and when. And then for their Local News Stories, they hardly include new ones so you're left with the same, stale news for a week! And their chief meteorologist, Bob Shaw, is only correct on his forecasts 1 out of 20 times. He's not even certified. He should have a "sparkling" retirement! But no, they keep him in for some unknown purpose. I only use this app because the other news stations in this area don't have one.
Those users saying they don't like the redesigned app are out of touch it seems. I use a lot of news apps and while KTVZ's is the best this upgrade sure made it a whole lot better! Finding articles and moving around the app are so much easier now. And the look is much cleaner and more professional looking. Now I too don't love the ad layouts but they are a local station and that's where the $$ is. At least you don't get pop ups like on they web site (btw Y2K called they want their pop up ads back!). All in all a great local news app from a small home town local affiliate! Keep up the great work!
Now in addition to the banner ads, there are ads interspersed in the list of stories (like I'm really going to be fooled). Between these, they can cover 75% of my iPhone screen. They must be hoping people accidentally tap the ads in this messy layout. There are also problems with the mandatory commercial they force in front of video stories. Often it is just a blank black screen that says Learn More, which then dumps back to the story list without playing the actual video. I'm now down to checking this app only about monthly because of the issues. One more irritating thing and I'll probably just delete it. Previous review: Top and bottom banner ads eat up lots of space on my iPhone. Since they usually are displaying the same thing, how about picking just one or the other. Amount of video available has been drastically reduced (though that might not be due to the app). I used to use this app every day to get my central Oregon news. Now I go primarily to the Bend Bulletin website and only check this app every week or two.
I look at this ktvz news site almost daily and find it usually current. One annoying item is the way all the stories jump over and down when the current weather box loads on the left side. This causes all the other stories to re-adjust, and if you just pressed a story, you might find it loaded the wrong one because the weather just pushed it under your finger. I know, in HTML anyway, there is a way to reserve this space, while the weather loads, so it doesn't displace other stories in the grid. Fix that and I'll be 5 stars.
The previous version of this app was my only internet based news source. I would check it multiple times daily and enjoyed the notifications that periodically popped on screen. Now I find most of the news stories are kept on the app for days and aside from local and political news, there is very little to choose from. Of the current version, I do like that all available stories are displayed in a list. The previous version displayed a list of 11 stories and the remaining 19 had to be swiped one from another to be assessed. I hope they keep most of the new format but get back the previous content.
Not smart phone friendly. Images and text are fixed, can’t enlarge or switch to sideview. Yes, and the advertisement clutter is over the top. The news content fairly often has typos, is generally poorly written, and some stories glitch when clicked. Many of the news stories shown are recycled from what was reported many weeks ago, or months. Still showing updates about the Cedar Ck fire in December when it ended in October? The app is so bad I’m surprised businesses would associate themselves with it via their advertisements. Has to be the worst app I’ve ever seen. KTVZ, show some effort at least.
1) The "View New Stories" pop up while in the app needs to stop just showing me stories about weather updates. Show actual new stories or change the pop up to say "View Current Weather." Also give me the ability to shut this off. 2) When leaving the app and coming back the main screen always goes to the top. Even if I was just away (like tapping on a link) for a few seconds. I've already seen what's on the top of the feed and want to resume where I left off. 3) Include comments section like on your regular website.
The KTVZ app's overall approach is mediocre and desperately in need of improvements! Chiefly, it has 3 prevailing issues!! 1) The push notifications come in 3's for each story!! Very redundant and super annoying! You'd think this would be fixed right away. 2) The way ads are used and placed are very annoying and tacky but have improved since the inception of this app. 3) When you click on the "app support" link all you get is their website...how is that support? If you want to be the best then you need to ask your consumers what's working and what's not. Come on KTVZ, it's 2015! Get with the times!!
It's still handy to have local news and weather on my phone, but I prefer the older UI. I also wish the newscasts would go back to 30 minutes. The new format drags on too much.
When I first installed the ap a few years ago it was a reasonably good ap. Since then with each update it gets buggier and buggier, crashes all the time. Now with the most recent update these pop up videos and banner ads make it completely unusable. I'll read a line and new video pops up. Close it read another line and the same ad/video pops up again. I like being able to keep up on the local news but this ap is making nearly impossible to do without throwing my phone across the room in frustration.
In landscape mode on my iPhone the ads are too big, forcing me to go the vertical mode. I love reading the comments below the stories on your website, it would be great if you could add that feature on the iPhone app - and even better if one could add a comment from the phone. Oh, and the sound on the weather webcast only works with my earbuds, would be great if it played through the iPhone speakers. Overall, pretty decent!
The giant pictures make it hard to filter through which articles I want to read and I really can't stand the new sidebar - liked it better before the big changes: simple, easy to read. Also there are never really a lot of updates or new stories. Obviously the people in charge of the app find it more important to complicate the readers' ability to use it than to include more interesting stories. Hate it. Probably going to switch to a different news app.
It’s really hard to get to the daily news. I have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the app page to get streaming news and then it’s in the middle of the daily report. Why don’t you have the latest news at the top of the page?
I like that I can finally get local news on my phone. The app is nice and simple, easy to navigate. The only problem I have is that recently every time I use the app, it tells me there is a serious error and that I have to close the app. It's pretty annoying and I've only ever gotten this message in this app so it isn't apple but it can be easily fixed with an update. Thanks for the mobile news!
Recent updates have only diminished this home screen news source for central Oregon news. The push notifications were once really useful, but lately the push memos have useless info as well, making me want to turn it off- I only want notifications on super important news, not what the Dow is doing. The original app had a great report news screen to upload video or pics and report Central Oregon news to KTVZ, but that is very buggy now. New versions of software are supposed to get better, not worse. Seems like stories disappear too soon on the app, but I suppose that is okay. It would be way better to have a way to get the weather on a simple screen. I'm not going to watch video. News in a small community is a difficult business and having an app is great. But this attempt could be better.
many times when using the weather app it's not current, it can be as much as 2 to 3 days off;(. for instance today is Wednesday and the 7 day forecast is displaying Tuesday through Monday ugh!! if it's not going to work correctly then take it off line as it serves no purpose to the user when it's Not correct. Hi Barney;)
Commuting back & forth (Bend to the Valley), I watch a lot of news on TV & spend significant time reading news on the web. KTVZ does a great job as a regional source....while supporting a smaller market, I appreciate the balance of local reporting, and when I see news feeds of national / intl breaking news, I go to KTVZ for "1st to report" summaries...they're quick
For the past 4 days there hasn't been any video available. I was out Thurs evening and wasn't able to watch the news but I knew I'd be able to see the weather on my KTVZ app. However, when I went to watch the video, there was nothing there. Even all the previous videos are missing! The video page is completely blank! Where are the weather videos?
This app allows me to skip most of the broadcast news and then select the news that is relevant. Unfortunately it doesn't get updated on weekends. I am sorry that the station is in such dire financial conditions that including an annoying ad to the bottom of the page became necessary. I would think that after running off all your competition the on air revenue would be sufficient.
It's great having an app connected to our local news station which sends out instant notifications keeping us informed of the happenings which may affect us here in Central Oregon. Thank you for a job well done!
They do a good job. I like reading at a quick glance the news for the area. I've since moved but still look back often of what is going on. Simple app with good updates.
If I click on a notification on my banner, it starts to open it then the app crashes. If I take more than 1 minute to read an article, the app crashes. Some times I see a story pop up in my notifications and when I open the app to read it, it's not there. Lots of issues to figure out. Probably released the app too soon. Either needs more testing or debugged by a professional.
As others have said, crashes ALL the time when you try and go to weather. And often crashes on its own while in other parts of app. What's the point if the app won't even stay open? Also, home page news seems to stick around for ages, and is often several days old. Some updates would be great.
This is my local news app but since the last release most of the mainline news stories are actually video segment underneath a headline. Unfortunately there is rarely and indicator from main news feed that content is video based. If you like to read/scan news this is not the app for you.
I've had zero problems with this crashing. I appreciate that the news is updated frequently. I can stay in touch with local news when I'm away from town. I like that.
This news station help keep up with the goings on in our area. Even when I'm away on business or just on vacation . News at my finger tip. Keep up the good work.
This is a very well written app. Smart and easy to navigate. It is full of all of the information you need regarding not only our town, but nationwide and beyond. Thank you!
Well, I really enjoyed being able to read a little entertainment news after reading especially sad 'real' news stories. With the update it seems entertainment news is no longer, bummer.
This app is crap. First of all, every time I go to the weather section the app crashes. Every. Single. Time. The "Breaking News" alerts are usually no big deal. I think every time a new story is added it's considered "Breaking News". The only thing decent about it is the layout, hence the extra star.
I used to love this app a couple years ago before they added an iAd at the top and the bottom of every screen. Now there is so little screen space left on my iPhone to read the news stories that I end up just going elsewhere for my news. Are they really making enough from those irrelevant iAds that they don't care about losing readers?
Crashes every time I open the app via push notification. If I go back to the app, it will open but the news story that prompted the notification is nowhere to be found. I end up going to the web browser instead. Pointless app at this point.
Pictures and headlines way too large; dislike location and size of ads
Mostly I dislike the placement of the ads and the fact that it is so easy to click on them inadvertently..of course that's their point isn't it? Also,wish picture /text relationship was better: too large pictures for text.. IOS user
Lack of pinch-expand zooming makes 7-day forecast hard to read .... Liked old format/layout better too. Stop re-doing pretty things and improve actual features please... I try not to use this app whenever possible since it has always been problematic.....
Completely loaded with ads! Pop up ads, video ads, and their servers are no good videos time out all the time, articles are wrote horrible with poor editing, this app is meant to milk money from you and at ridiculous levels. Spend 10 minutes on this? Prepare for 5-15 ads depending on what you’re doing.
The app itself is fine. But two huge advertising banners are annoying and take up so much space it is ridiculous. Much of the time, they are the same advertisement. Can't you just have one banner?
I want to go back 2-3 versions. Each update makes the app more cumbersome to use. I'm not a fan of the large pictures. I prefer to pick articles based on title not the picture since rarely does the picture even begin to depict what the story is about. Please go back to the old menu as well.
Seems like there are too few posts. Would like to see a topical archive, ie past articles on big news items like Mirror Pond, OSU west campus. Would also really appreciate a comprehensive "what's happening" section.
So disappointed that you can't even use your own 7 day forecast! I use this app all the time and usually every morning to check the 7 day forecast. Now the 7 day forecast is by weather underground. Really sad!
Central Oregon's News, Weather, and Sports Leader is now available on your iPhone. KTVZ.com provides news, entertainment, and weather updates 24 hours a day. The Local Alert Weather Team will keep you informed of changing weather conditions, forecasts, and weather updates, and let you know when severe weather is headed your way. KTVZ.com also lets you keep tabs on you favorite sports teams with scores and updates.
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