Orange County Register aiming to make its iPad app more like TV

NetNewsCheck
Doug Bennett, head of Freedom Interactive, tells Michael Depp that the most popular feature in The Orange County Register’s iPad app, which is published in the evening, is an interactive, magazine-like feature story that is focused on entertainment rather than news. To build on that interest, the company is developing a series of two-to-three-minute videos that focus on high school football, tech and extreme sports. “The one thing that we’ve found is we like this whole ‘show’ mentality. In fact, our marketing is now going in that direction, too. We now market it more like television because that’s how the expectations are around the content,” Bennett says. As he expected, the iPad app is reaching a younger audience that isn’t already a customer of the newspaper. The current app will be rebranded as “The Peel,” and a news-oriented app is in the works. || Related: Orange County Register reinvents evening news cycle with curated iPad app