KETV NewsWatch 7 - Omaha Reviews

There are so many bugs in KETVNewsWatch7 that to list them all is probably not productive. However; a couple of the more egregious problems should be addressed so that they (hopefully) will be fixed. Attaching the wrong video to the story, happens way too often. Sending notification of a breaking event and not being able to find the story immediately. Please proof read the writing, there are so many mistakes for a news organization. A continuation of my original review. KETVNewsWatch7 does not work well with iOS 13. Stories end abruptly, i.e. a story will stop mid-sentence and there is no more. Haven’t read a complete story since updating my operating system. This is a news organization that evidently still doesn’t believe in proofreading their stories, I’ve never seen so many errors. It also appears that they don’t read the reviews or just don’t care because they’ve never fixed any of the problems. Problems when attempting to read a news story, i.e. story lines are truncated mid-sentence. KETVNewsWatch7 continues to be the worst app I’ve ever used.

My biggest irritation with KETVNewsWatch7 as well as the local newspaper apps are ADVERTISING. I get notified of breaking news. Sometimes when I open KETVNewsWatch7 to read the story I get a blank page. Other times you are immediately confronted with an ad. If that’s not bad enough, as you read through the story ads keep popping up sometimes causing you to lose your place since the article has now moved to another part of the page. Finally sometimes these ads are so distracting that I give up reading the article because of what I just said. Videos aren’t much better. They usually begin with a 30 second ad and if for some reason the video freezes and you have to restart, you guessed it, another 30 second add. I know none of what I said will change anything but you asked for a rating so I gave it. I would rather pay an annual fee and be done with the ads. I like the way the public radio stations do it. Maybe you ought to try some benchmarking.

Edited Dec 22:
Foolish me, I decided to watch two UNL dorms come down on the KETV app. I sat through two commercials, Melissa Fry comes on, then they interrupt her mid sentence to run four more. When the fifth came on, I could see it was too late, though I tried to find another website to watch the implosion. Stupid me. I’m deleting KETVNewsWatch7 for good.

I’ve rated KETVNewsWatch7 a 2 Star, now I’m downgrading it to just 1. I was just looking at the KETV page to email the webmaster, when a popup appeared asking me to rate this, which I am glad to do.
This page is awful. The print is so small, it’s unreadable to me. I’ve tried to blow it up so I can read it, but it’s not capable of doing so. Sometimes I’d rather read a story rather than watching, but there is no way I can do so.
I’ll get a notification that there is a news conference to watch, but nothing happens except for a few commercials. I understand I have to sit through them, but then the conference won’t some on, it says something about how there is nothing to watch.
Channel 7 is my preferred channel to watch, but there is no way I can read the news via KETVNewsWatch7. I choose to read another channel’s web page, where I can blow up the text large enough to read. On the other hand, other reviewers are mentioning the typos, so it mIght be a good thing I can’t read it.

Within the last few weeks, KETVNewsWatch7 will not open a news story when I tap on it and KETVNewsWatch7 will freeze. I keep checking to see if there is an update to fix this, but the recent update didn’t fix it. I’ve also noticed that when I receive a notification about a news story, I tap on it and it goes straight to the home page. The news story that came up as the notification is difficult to find and not directly available to view. I’m still able to successfully navigate the weather portion of KETVNewsWatch7 , but that’s it. Please fix these issues!!

I have had great luck with the KETV app. There seems to be less annoying advertisements or ones that I can easily avoid on the news site. Reading stories is easy. The font size is perfect plus linking the videos has always been quick and easy. I enjoy the cleanliness of the whole website. Easy to navigate, easy to find what you want. Great site. I highly recommend it.

Notifications about breaking news not immediately available to read.
App locks up sometimes when moving around in KETVNewsWatch7 .
It would be nice to have a way to manually move thru the radar map. It moves slowly over a long period of time when all I want to see might be the last 15-20 minutes.
Story font is very tiny and difficult to read.
Even when I have notifications turned off, I still get multiple notifications about when rain will begin at my house.

Downloaded KETVNewsWatch7 only for the weather info and radar. Definitely met my expectations and had good accuracy when calling for chances of rain. Also good to catch a breaking news story and keep up to date on what’s going on.

The reason I only gave KETVNewsWatch7 3 stars is they started selling advertising to view their radar maps or forecasts. I will certainly not wait for an ad to finish when I want to look at the radar, thus I deleted KETVNewsWatch7 . Plenty of more free radar and forecasting apps on the market that don’t make you watch a commercial.

I like the mechanics of your app but the administration is deplorable.
I understand tithe need for advertisers but there must be a better way then pop-ups and long strings of them between paragraphs.
Your on air broadcasts are award winning and ten steps ahead of others in the area.
You need a full time administrator who can spend the time to update at least twice in 24 hours..
Theres articles out there that have been there for months. If a story has a video only leave it there with the story for a short time then move it to a separate queue. Along with day old stories.
And please
, if you send an alert on a “breaking news” wait for some of the story to unfold. As it is now formatted it’s wasting my time alarming me for nothing.
That’s all. I am really a fan but these things have bothered me for some time..
All you’re reporters anchor people and broadcasts are the best.
Thanks for asking.
Margaret Beal

I love the weather updates. I’m in the western part of Kansas and with the bad storms rolling through the last couple of days made me feel safe . If I didn’t have KETVNewsWatch7 I would have been driving in bad weather. The forecast is good today but windy for tomorrow and I don’t want to be driving in Kansas with wind gusts up to 30-40 mph straight side winds. Thank you for your service.

Julia G.

I like to get my news through an app, however, a major request.... I don’t want a video to play Instantly whenever I tap on a story! Ever in a quiet place you don’t want to play a video?! Up in the middle of the night and don’t want to wake a partner? Holding a a baby all day and trying to get important news updates without KETVNewsWatch7 blasting a video? A quiet waiting room?
I agree with other reviews when there are breaking news notifications it would be great to have a place in KETVNewsWatch7 to take you to that story quickly. If it’s breaking I shouldn’t have to dig did it. Otherwise I appreciate the news source.

I don’t like that it freezes and jumps around the news cast. It will repeat the same few seconds multiple times then skip ahead a minute or two. They finally fixed the bug where my alarm goes off (getting ready in the am) and it would completely stop. 👍🏻Overall it’s my least favorite app and most difficult to watch the news in the morning. I keep watching bc I like the morning crew. But they need to make improvements

Channel 7 is the most professional, accurate station in Omaha. Thank you for rescuing the Burlington Station, five stars for that.! Omaha needs more improvements in that area . Your newscasters, weather forecasters, sports casters & all reporters are a class act!! And I love the outfits the women wear, very professional! And the guys always look fantastic and of course handsome! Keep up the good work!👍🏼

It would be nice if when I clicked on a notification or alert that KETVNewsWatch7 actually took me to that specific story instead of the home page. I end up spending more time trying to find the story in KETVNewsWatch7 than anything else. I usually end up closing KETVNewsWatch7 and then google the story because I have better luck that way. What’s the point of getting a notification or an alert if you can’t click it and see what you are being notified for?

On nearly every report I try to read, an ad blocks off some of the text. When in try to remove the ad and report the problem, the text is still missing from the report. I have tried to make the font both bigger and smaller and the same problem occurs. I delete and reload KETVNewsWatch7 and no change. This is an iPhone 7 and my husband has an iPhone 8 and he does not have the problem.

Weather is great, the rest is mostly crap ads and news that is not from Omaha. EVERY news outlet outside of Omaha has an app to read world news, putting it in your local news app and adding 2 million ads and commercials and slanting the stories makes your app great for weather, and little else. Cut the ads and forced video watching in half and you might have a more popular/used app.

So often I come to KETVNewsWatch7 & there is nothing there, a big black hole. Sometimes I want to watch the news. It isn’t available or doesn’t start at 10:00. Sometimes news stories are not updated. I turn to the weather report & there’s no way to tell what time it was given. I’m hearing morning info when it’s past & gone. Very frustrating. So why do I check KETVNewsWatch7 first when I want local info? Beats me!

KETV has the most accurate weather and updated news to stay informed for the Omaha area.
One glitch though, in the articles the last words of the first paragraph disappear into the first ad. Hope they fix this issue.

I often get a “Breaking news” message only to find the story isn’t yet available in KETVNewsWatch7 . Please make sure stories are available before sending the news flash.

Also, please update or change stories more often and work to have fewer typos.

I’m sure you can do much better—the other news stations all do! Why do I keep getting flipped back to the beginning after I’ve read a story? Why do you keep old news stories intermingled with your current ones? What is your font size so much smaller than any other news app? Only the weather is good and an occasional unique human interest story that the other channels don’t have. Please find a new professional to upgrade your app!

I use this everyday . And of course it has adds . It's free . But the biggest issue I have is how long and old you leave content / old story's on the page . It is quite obvious that no one seems to be working on updating the whole site on a regular basis. Mostly Vuz videos. So for a lot of my daily news I have to go to other sites. I do realize it is a Tv Station and not a paper though...

I’ve had KETVNewsWatch7 for quite a while. The advertisements work PERFECTLY. The rest of it...wow...freezes up constantly (except for the ads). I can’t make it through one newscast with out it freezing up or it will “studder” and repeat like it’s replaying the last 3 seconds. You always miss the top stories of the newscast because even though it says “watch now”, after you get done watching the ads, which stream perfectly by the way, the blue screen of death (KETV logo) just sits there..very frustrating. Please fix KETVNewsWatch7.

Where ever we go we keep an eye on hometown news using our APP. Keep it simple. It will be fun to be able to see and listen to news stories, but not everyones batteries can handle too much media. There should always also be text, too.

Receiving a notice of breaking news because someone (not even locally) is celebrating the 3 month birthday, is not Breaking News.

There are many other examples of non-news worthy items that you notify us of as breaking news.

Please have a better checks and balances on this practice.

I like KETV to watch but not a fan of KETVNewsWatch7 . Commercials come first (which I get-gotta pay to keep it free) but the sound comes in even when I have my phone on silent or vibrate. This is not okay! I have it on silent so it does not disturb. This is a huge problem so I will read the alert only and not open the content. When I do open it, the headlines make it tough to tell whether it’s local or national news.

Like some other reviews I saw, my greatest frustration is receiving notifications of breaking news only to open KETVNewsWatch7 and find nothing about the story in the notification. Not even a headline. Otherwise, I appreciate the coverage.