NBC took a step into the digital age this week and released a new iPad app to complement its full-fledged website.
The app is optimized for easy use on the iPad’s 10″ screen, and provides users with a wide variety of features. These include the network’s schedule, show information, exclusive photos, interactive games, and searchable content (by show.) A customizable dashboard even offers a personalized view of your favorite shows and content.
It also includes some short video clips and recaps, but lacks a major feature: full-length episodes of NBC shows. This means that if you’re looking to rent NBC episodes on iTunes and Apple TV, you’re still out of luck. Interestingly, many shows from NBC Universal are available for streaming on Netflix and even Hulu.
Of course, those are both subscription-based services, but NBC could’ve easily monetized the episodes through ad-support (which it does on NBC.com) had it chosen to make them available in the iPad app. By not choosing to provide its iOS audience with a convenient mobile option for viewing its most popular TV shows, NBC is essentially telling its fans to go use someone else’s app to view its content.
You can download NBC.com for iPad in the App Store for free.
via Gigaom
