LSN Mobile Local News App Passes 5 Million User Mark

Popularity of app points to explosive growth of mobile market and consumer thirst for targeted, up-to-the-minute local info

NEW YORK CITY, May 11, 2011 - LSN Mobile, which owns and operates the nation's largest mobile news network, reports that its local news app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry® has been downloaded more than 5 million times since it was introduced in 2009, making it one of the top-ranked, no-cost news apps available. That means one in every 60 U.S. households has accessed the app to glean local content. Local News, Weather and More provides consumers with breaking news, weather information, gas prices, flight statuses, sport scores and other information from their local regions. The app pulls content via the websites of consumers' local news affiliates. 

"The number of downloads of Local News, Weather and More shows how much people want and need local content," said Lee Durham, CEO of LSN Mobile. "News, weather, entertainment, gas prices - all of those are things that consumers want to know about every day, on their own time, and they want to know about them from a reliable local source." 

The milestone points not only to the significance of mobile media and the growth of the overall mobile application market, but also to the ever-increasing importance of getting timely content delivered in the context of consumers' local regions. The milestone also points to the importance of mobile marketing and its increasing significance as a way to engage local consumers. 

The rapid uptake of mobile devices is partly responsible for the trend. Recent numbers from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project ("How mobile devices are changing community information environments") show that nearly half of all American adults get at least some of their local news and information from their smartphone or tablet devices - and even though local news and information apps are just taking hold, 11 percent of the population already reports using mobile apps to keep up-to-date on local news. 

The trend of consumers accessing local sources of information is driven in part by events that are specific to local regions, but it also is greatly impacted by events of national and even global significance. For example, LSN Mobile reported 24 million page views of its localized mobile websites in a single day recently when severe storms hit areas in the south - a record for the company. But LSN Mobile also said more than 5.2 million text alerts in just one day were sent from its mobile app when the U.S. government announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed. 

"When events like bad weather or globally significant news events hit, people are turning to their mobile devices to keep up on the latest alerts," Durham said. "What keeps them coming back is the access to all the rich content that surrounds that news. People want a trusted local source to deliver the information that's important to them, and if they get that they will continue to return to that source for all their information needs." 

LSN Mobile has grown significantly since the company was founded in 2001. The company powers mobile websites for more than 250 TV operating groups including ABC, Telemundo, Post-Newsweek Stations, Hearst, Local TV LLC and Nexstar and has built more than 500 branded apps for each of its news affiliates. Last year the company managed more than 2,000 mobile marketing campaigns for those outlets. The firm consistently delivers more than 400 million mobile page views per month and more than 30 million unique visitors per month to the sites it powers. In addition, LSN Mobile pushes about 20 million breaking news text alerts monthly that carry branding for 130 advertisers. 

About LSN Mobile, Inc.
LSN Mobile, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is a mobile media and marketing company that enables local media and brand advertisers to extend their reach to the mobile consumer market via their handset. LSN Mobile has the nation's largest network of local television news content, in both English and Spanish, currently offering news, weather, sports and more to more than 30 million unique mobile users per month. LSN Mobile also enables companies to rapidly deploy direct mobile marketing campaigns to mobile users via text messaging, rich media content, and interactive mobile marketing campaigns across all wireless carriers and handsets. LSN Mobile's "Local News, Weather and More" mobile apps for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry platforms are among the top ten free downloadable local news applications.