KTVZ NewsChannel 21 Reviews

Wow, done with KTVZNewsChannel21. First it was adds popping up with every page, now it crashes when you try and open the weather! Doesn't anyone who works there try their own stuff to make sure it works? Pure junk, plus, stop publishing CNN opinion stories as if they are real news.

Update: well, it was good for awhile. When it was updated, I tried again. It was working for for me to get my news, now back to political hit pieces via cnn. Can’t we just have news? Who cares what the First Lady wears? And how she is awful at choosing outfits compared to last First Lady? Come on, just news please. If I wanted cnn I would just download their app. Be creative and focus on Bend, and just report what happens. Come together and stand out as a news source that unites instead of choosing sides with obvious bias from those who work at z21. Its deleted from my platform once more. I hope that some one is reading and can be an adult who is ok with listing and learning from all people, not those who just agree with the beat of the cnn drum.

This is my local news app but since the last release most of the mainline news stories are actually video segment underneath a headline. Unfortunately there is rarely and indicator from main news feed that content is video based. If you like to read/scan news this is not KTVZNewsChannel21 for you.

Most of the stories they "report" are contrite, containing one or two paragraphs that say next to nothing. It's a small news source pretending to be a big one and fails miserably. When the report something, there's hardly any meat to the story, leaving you wanting more. It they don't provide it. Basically, they put fillers in so it looks like they're reporting more than they actually do. Bunch of rank amateurs who know nothing about how to report...who, what, where, why, and when. And then for their Local News Stories, they hardly include new ones so you're left with the same, stale news for a week!
And their chief meteorologist, Bob Shaw, is only correct on his forecasts 1 out of 20 times. He's not even certified. He should have a "sparkling" retirement! But no, they keep him in for some unknown purpose.
I only use KTVZNewsChannel21 because the other news stations in this area don't have one.

Completely loaded with ads! Pop up ads, video ads, and their servers are no good videos time out all the time, articles are wrote horrible with poor editing, KTVZNewsChannel21 is meant to milk money from you and at ridiculous levels. Spend 10 minutes on this? Prepare for 5-15 ads depending on what you’re doing.

They are very fast at responding I was in the rpa bus crash and the were there like when the cops got there

Had to delete. Loved having breaking news notifications. Tired of the notifications on what’s coming up on the 5,6,7,10 o’clock news.

I deleted it. This used to be a decent, middle of the road honest news site - the best in Oregon IMHO. But in the past few months it has lurched left - regurgitating the worst of National Socialist media. No sense having two CNN apps on my phone.

Content is mostly from fake news networks. Add more local news and get national content from Fox and it would be great.

Wrong pictures with wrong headlines, now I’m seeing “sponsored” click bait throughout. I’m about to delete.

Fake News “Sponsored Content” ads make KTVZNewsChannel21 no better than a gossip column...have a spine, stick to accurate fact checked informational news.

You have to read the whole story and still don’t get the fake news headlines, to pro liberal they can do no wrong.

I remember when they used to cover news and not push opinion...

Now in addition to the banner ads, there are ads interspersed in the list of stories (like I'm really going to be fooled). Between these, they can cover 75% of my iPhone screen. They must be hoping people accidentally tap the ads in this messy layout.

There are also problems with the mandatory commercial they force in front of video stories. Often it is just a blank black screen that says Learn More, which then dumps back to the story list without playing the actual video.

I'm now down to checking KTVZNewsChannel21 only about monthly because of the issues. One more irritating thing and I'll probably just delete it.

Previous review:
Top and bottom banner ads eat up lots of space on my iPhone. Since they usually are displaying the same thing, how about picking just one or the other.

Amount of video available has been drastically reduced (though that might not be due to KTVZNewsChannel21 ). I used to use KTVZNewsChannel21 every day to get my central Oregon news. Now I go primarily to the Bend Bulletin website and only check KTVZNewsChannel21 every week or two.

Those users saying they don't like the redesigned app are out of touch it seems. I use a lot of news apps and while KTVZ's is the best this upgrade sure made it a whole lot better! Finding articles and moving around KTVZNewsChannel21 are so much easier now. And the look is much cleaner and more professional looking.

Now I too don't love the ad layouts but they are a local station and that's where the $$ is. At least you don't get pop ups like on they web site (btw Y2K called they want their pop up ads back!).

All in all a great local news app from a small home town local affiliate! Keep up the great work!

1) The "View New Stories" pop up while in KTVZNewsChannel21 needs to stop just showing me stories about weather updates. Show actual new stories or change the pop up to say "View Current Weather." Also give me the ability to shut this off.

2) When leaving KTVZNewsChannel21 and coming back the main screen always goes to the top. Even if I was just away (like tapping on a link) for a few seconds. I've already seen what's on the top of the feed and want to resume where I left off.

3) Include comments section like on your regular website.

I look at this ktvz news site almost daily and find it usually current. One annoying item is the way all the stories jump over and down when the current weather box loads on the left side. This causes all the other stories to re-adjust, and if you just pressed a story, you might find it loaded the wrong one because the weather just pushed it under your finger.
I know, in HTML anyway, there is a way to reserve this space, while the weather loads, so it doesn't displace other stories in the grid.
Fix that and I'll be 5 stars.

The giant pictures make it hard to filter through which articles I want to read and I really can't stand the new sidebar - liked it better before the big changes: simple, easy to read. Also there are never really a lot of updates or new stories. Obviously the people in charge of KTVZNewsChannel21 find it more important to complicate the readers' ability to use it than to include more interesting stories. Hate it. Probably going to switch to a different news app.

The KTVZ app's overall approach is mediocre and desperately in need of improvements! Chiefly, it has 3 prevailing issues!!
1) The push notifications come in 3's for each story!! Very redundant and super annoying! You'd think this would be fixed right away.
2) The way ads are used and placed are very annoying and tacky but have improved since the inception of KTVZNewsChannel21.
3) When you click on the "app support" link all you get is their website...how is that support? If you want to be the best then you need to ask your consumers what's working and what's not. Come on KTVZ, it's 2015! Get with the times!!

We especially like KTVZNewsChannel21 while traveling. It keeps us up on what's going on in our community while in other parts of the country. We like the alerts of breaking news. Additionally, until we get out of our Direct TV contract, we rely on KTVZNewsChannel21 for daily, current news. Thank you for making KTVZNewsChannel21 available.

When I first installed the ap a few years ago it was a reasonably good ap. Since then with each update it gets buggier and buggier, crashes all the time. Now with the most recent update these pop up videos and banner ads make it completely unusable. I'll read a line and new video pops up. Close it read another line and the same ad/video pops up again. I like being able to keep up on the local news but this ap is making nearly impossible to do without throwing my phone across the room in frustration.