CBC News and CBC Radio continue to put mobile first with the complete re-design and optimization of both the CBC News and CBC Radio apps for iOS 8. Rebuilt from the ground up and in-house, written in Swift and optimized for iOS 8, the new apps with fresh user interfaces are customizable with an emphasis on creating a more personal and seamless user experience. The new apps offer a more visual experience, making it easy for users to find the latest stories, audio, music and videos from our award-winning team of journalists and hosts.
“As CBC moves forward with our mobile first strategy, and as Canadians are increasingly consuming their content on mobile devices, we want to lead the market with our new apps,” said Jennifer McGuire, general manager and editor in chief, CBC News and Centres. “The new apps are focused on getting local news and information into the hands of Canadians, and ensuring a better user experience that reflects their interests, tastes, and lifestyles.”
“Our new radio app is designed to allow Canadians to be the program director, curating their own radio experience, choosing the segments from their favourite CBC Radio shows that are most relevant to their lives,” said Chris Boyce, executive director, radio and audio, CBC English Services. “Whether you love talk, music or news, or prefer listening to local radio from across the country, our new radio app puts you in control and lets you listen to what you want to hear, when you want to hear it.”
Whether users are from Calgary or Montreal or anywhere else in the country, the new geo-location feature gives Canadians relevant content for their region, or lets users manually change their location if they prefer to be in touch with another region altogether. And those who prefer politics or science news can now customize their experience and curate the sections according to their interests.
CBC News and CBC Radio are now integrated with Apple’s Handoff continuity feature, so users can get the latest news or music on their iOS device and use Handoff to continue on their other iOS devices.
The key features of the re-imagined CBC News and CBC Radio apps for iOS 8 are:
CBC News:
- Re-imagined user interface and user experience
- Optimized for iOS 8
- Users can now customize their experience and curate the sections according to their interest
- Strong focus on localization - the app can tell where users are via geo-location and give them relevant content for their region, or let them manually change it if they’d like to be in touch with another region altogether
- Integrated with Apple’s Handoff continuity feature
CBC Radio:
- Re-imagined user interface and experience
- Optimized for iOS 8
- Curated audio stories featured daily
- Ability to save favourite audio stories
- Users can browse audio by subject category (news, business, health, books, etc.)
- Detects user’s location for ease of local live listening
- Offers audio from more than 80 shows, as well as Radio One, 2, 3 and Sonica live streams
- Integrated with Apple’s Handoff continuity feature
More than one million Canadians have downloaded the CBC News app on iOS since its launch, and more than one million Canadians have downloaded the CBC Radio app on all mobile devices. During the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, more than 2.5 million Canadians downloaded the CBC Olympics app.
The new CBC News and CBC Radio apps are optimized for iOS 8, and are available for free download from the App Store on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and at www.AppStore.com/cbcapps.
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About CBC/Radio-Canada
CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. The Corporation is a leader in reaching Canadians on new platforms and delivers a comprehensive range of radio, television, internet, and satellite-based services. Deeply rooted in the regions, CBC/Radio-Canada is the only domestic broadcaster to offer diverse regional and cultural perspectives in English, French and eight Aboriginal languages.
A space for us all is CBC/Radio-Canada’s new strategy to modernize the public broadcaster and ensure that it continues to fulfill its mandate for Canadians and for future generations. Through to 2020, it will increase its investment in prime time television programming, and continue to create radio programs of the highest quality, while promoting the development of digital and mobile platforms and content.
For more information including series synopses, press releases, hi-res images, video clips and bios, please visit the CBC Media Centre at cbc.ca/mediacentre. Follow CBC’s publicity team on Twitter @CBC_Publicity.
For further information, or to request interviews, contact:
Corey Black, News and Current Affairs publicist, CBC
416.205.8710 (office)/647.221.4133 (mobile)
Corey.Black@CBC.ca
