NEW YORK: Hearst Television Inc., parent of one of the country’s largest television station groups, has launched an “Election 2012” app featuring up-to-the-minute and in-depth election-related national content as well as content from the company’s news stations in 25 markets stretching from Portland, Maine to Honolulu.
The advertising-supported Election 2012 app is available for free in the iTunes Store for iPhone users and the Google Play Store for Android users. The app includes an interface enabling users to browse local election and political coverage, local “voters guides” within information such as voter registration deadlines, polling locations, candidate biographies and their positions on issues; a countdown clock to election day, Electoral College map, “photo of the day,” Facebook integration, live election video and news updates and the ability to upload user generated content.
Each station’s local content is fed to the app using the content management system of Hearst Television partner company Internet Broadcasting.
The Election 2012 app is the latest feature of Hearst Television’s Commitment 2012 election-coverage project, a renewal of the Company’s biannual election-coverage efforts which began with Commitment 2000 and which have earned a Peabody Award and multiple USC Annenberg Walter Cronkite Awards. Other features of Commitment 2012 include “12 in 12”— a pledge of a minimum 12 minutes’ airtime for daily political news and candidate-discourse coverage—and an exclusive partnership with PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website of the Tampa Bay Times.
“This app should come in handy not only for voters in the 25 Hearst Television news markets, but for any political observer interested in the latest developments in closely contested presidential-election states like Florida, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—and in states hosting tight Senate races, like Massachusetts—in all of which states Hearst Television has leading news stations and websites,” said Roger Keating, Senior Vice President of Hearst Television Inc.
