Who doesn’t love gossip (even if they deny it)? Nexstar Broadcasting Group is tapping into that by launching the “Gossip Hot Spot” on its online community portals.
Nexstar is expanded its relationship with Mixx to collaborate on the launch of the real time social media gossip channel, based on the Mixx social media platform. The Gossip Hot Spot aggregates gossip content and chatter from across the social media spectrum in an “informative, interactive, fun to use site the enables users to influence who, when, where, and what is hot right now,” the companies said.
The Gossip Hot Spot channel, which goes live on Friday, July 16, extracts real time buzzing gossip news and activity from across Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Mixx, and Google Buzz. Contributors via social media postings to the Gossip Hot Spot channel include celebrities Lady Gaga, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan as well as talk show hosts Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. In addition, direct feeds from the accounts of TMZ, Perez Hilton, US Weekly, People Magazine and others ensure that the latest breaking developments reach Gossip Hot Spot users immediately.
“The Gossip Hot Spot is an innovative one-stop, real time source of gossip and celebrity news and reflects Nexstar’s commitment to providing audiences with additional content and interactive options through our community portals,” said Marc Montoya, Nexstar’s Senior Vice President, eMEDIA. “Beta testing of the Gossip Hot Spot on our Jacksonville, Florida portal met with excellent consumer response and we expect the channel to be the go-to source to satiate users’ interest and curiosity in the happenings of the world’s biggest stars. In doing so, we’ll further develop this platform as a high value media buy for advertisers,” he noted.
“We’re thrilled to be expanding our relationship with Nexstar Broadcasting as we build on the success of the Jacksonville market test and launch these channels on a greatly expanded platform,” said Chris McGill, founder/CEO of Mixx. “We are providing white-labeling of our Mixx Channels platform, enabling Nexstar to increase its audience, content, engagement and revenue,” he added.
The “Gossip Hot Spot” will be available on the following Nexstar Broadcasting community portals and can be accessed anywhere, anytime:
http:www.yourjax.com: Jacksonville, Florida
http://arkansasmatters.com/entertainment/entertainment-news#tvg: Hot Springs, AR
http://weareaustin.com/entertainment/gossipshop: Austin, TX
http://arklatexhomepage.com/gossip-hot-spot: Shreveport, LA and Texarkana, TX
http://setxhomepage.com/entertainment/gossiphotspot: Beaumont, TX
http://your4state.com/entertainment/gossip-shop: Hagerstown, MD
http://fourstateshomepage.com/news/entertainment-news: Joplin, MO
Three more community portals in Florida, Louisiana and Illinois will be deployed in the upcoming weeks.
Nexstar currently owns, operates, programs or provides sales and other services to 59 television stations in 34 markets and reaches approximately 13 million viewers or approximately 11.5% of all US television households.
Mixx is owned by Recommended Reading, Inc., a privately-held company dedicated to connecting users and publishers in the digital media environment.
RBR-TVBR observation: “Content is king” is not just a slogan. Different content appeals to different people, so adding gossip should draw people online who may not be so concerned about Nexstar’s local news and other more traditional TV station online material.
