While at Disney ABC I worked to design a connected TV app experience for local news. I worked with research, design, and engineering to collect audience feedback that would drive the user experience. I collected the research and drafted epics and user stories intended to address the needs of our news consumers. Once released we had an ABC local news app in 8 markets on Roku and FireTV devices. This was a first for ABC, a long standing, local news provider.

Business Challenge

After many years of resisting the transition from broadcast to streaming services Disney ABC made the decision to offer their local news broadcast to a connected TV (CTV) audience. Cord cutting was happening at about 15% YoY and CTV audiences were growing at over 80% YoY. This was an opportunity to ensure that ABC capitalizes on the growth of CTV while continuing to address the strong demand for local news and entertainment.

Here is a news article covering CTV adoption rates in early 2020:

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/01/24/connected-tv-households-set-grow-82-2023

While ABC had previously dabbled in the CTV space, this effort was the first fully comprehensive initiative intended to embrace the CTV revolution. The challenge would be to design an experience that could leverage the existing broadcast news content pipeline and package it into a compelling digital living room experience.

Goals and Objectives

Once the business approved the live newscast for CTV we had to determine the type of experience the ABC local news audience would find most compelling. For the first version of the app we set the following objectives:

1. Conduct user research to better understand the needs of the modern living room local news consumer.
2. Leverage research findings to rebrand and improve the ABC News app for the local news market.

These two objectives would ensure we quickly deliver an initial local news experience.

Metrics and Key Performance Indicators

The primary key performance indicator (KPI) was to measure adoption of the local news app relative to other endpoints.

Metrics

1. Audience adoption of local news app relative to other existing endpoints.
2. Audience engagement with live news content measured in:
   1. Video starts/initiates (LIVE/VOD)
   2. Content completion rate (VOD)
   3. Content time spent/Watch time (LIVE/VOD)
   4. Ad completion
   5. Audience Retention
   6. 1st/2nd video start count

Solution

Monitization – Advertising

ABC OTV maintained the ad model standard across all owned endpoints:

• VOD pre-rolls before each clip
• Live DAI for broadcast ad breaks

Research

In order to maximize the success of the CTV newscast experience it was critical to gather information about viewer preferences. Bill partnered with the ABC Entertainment and the ABC research team to research the needs of news consumers. This involved integrating news content with the ABC Entertainment app and conducting usability studies with consumer focus groups. This effort revealed critical information about what viewers expected from a living room news experience. 

There were three key areas of concern that resulted from the research:

1. Live vs Video On-Demand (VOD)
   1. Legacy broadcast workflows coupled with content auto-play makes it difficult for viewers to determine live content from VOD content. Broadcast TV often embeds “LIVE” graphics into the video that is difficult to remove from archived video. Coupled with auto-play, live and VOD content can be indistinguishable.
2. Content Discovery
   1. Easily discovering content was a huge desire with customers. Viewers clearly desired more content category options. This included more live news and events as well as content focused on local activities. Customers also desired the ability to easily surface specific stories and content of interest. Age of stories and a list of available topics and categories should be clearly listed. Finally viewers wanted clear notification of the availability of live content.
3. App Navigation
   1. Viewers continue to struggle with the in-app navigation experience for CTV. More robust keyword searches, intuitive navigation, being clearly presented with available content categories were all highly desired. Ensuring that the back button didn’t exit the app was another point of frustration for audiences.

Solution Design

After collecting the research data Bill leveraged the Scrum agile framework to document the appropriate epics and user stories for the frontend experience. The design was focused on directly addressing the viewer feedback obtained from the usability studies to ensure an optimal CTV experience for live news. 

Design decisions included (see pics):

1. Elevating live news to the top content shelf in the app when live content was published.
   1. Active live content with autoplay 1.jpg
2. Auto-playing live content in the background when published.
   1. Active live content with autoplay 2.jpg
3. Prompting viewers with “ON NOW” and “WATCH LIVE” when live content is available AND when new live content is published.
   1. Live stream notification pop-up.jpg
4. Clearly displaying the status and next air time for live newscasts that are not available.
   1. Next broadcast message.jpg
5. Adding content from the growing localish brand covering in region events and activities.
   1. Content categories – localish.jpg
6. Clearly labeling vod news as News On Demand.
   1. Live and VOD news shelf.jpg
7. Clearly labeling each content shelf to the nature of the type of content.
   1. Content categories 1
   2. Content categories 2
8. Labeling the resulting action with key navigation buttons on each screen.
   1. Back button – return to previous page.jpg
9. Active live newscast should be priority for auto-play
   1. Active live content with autoplay.jpg
10. When newscast concludes auto-play should continue to VOD playlist
11. Autoplay should play all videos within a category before moving on to the next category.

The following CTV apps were delivered to market on Roku and FireTV:

1. abc7.com – Eyewitness News – KABC – Los Angeles and So. Cal
2. Abc7news.com – ABC7 News – KGO – Bay Area
3. Abc30.com – Action News – KFSN – Fresno, CA
4. Abc7chicago.com – Eyewitness News – WLS – Chicago
5. Abc13.com – Eyewitness News – KTRK – Houston
6. 6abc.com – Action News – WPVI Philidelphia
7. Abc11.com – Eyewitness News – WTVD – Raleigh-Durham
8. Abc7ny.com – Eyewitness News – WABC – New York

Product Strategy

Execution Plan

Results and Learnings

What Went Right

What Went Wrong

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