Rogers Launches Second-Screen iPad App

Canadian service provider Rogers Communications (News - Alert) has added the Rogers Anyplace TV Home Edition app for select tablets and smartphones to its arsenal of next-gen television offerings. The move comes just as multitasking is on the rise: New research from Nielsen shows a growing importance of social TV and second-screen apps to viewers.

The new application, available on iPad and iPhone (News - Alert) now and launching on Android tablets and smartphones later this year, makes it possible to live stream 25 channels of news, sports and entertainment, and use advanced search, a virtual remote control and remotely manage and set PVR content.

"Our customers love to combine TV viewing with multi-tasking,” said John Boynton, executive vice president and CMO at Rogers. “The Rogers Anyplace TV Home Edition app is the ultimate TV companion that provides a seamless experience for our customers. By offering TV management features, in addition to live streaming on tablets, customers can control content from a second screen without interrupting what's currently on their TV. This represents the next step in our commitment to delivering the world-leading internet experiences customers want and expect from Rogers."

Dovetailing with the move, TV measurement company Nielsen found that 85 percent of mobile owners use their tablet or smartphone while watching TV at least once per month, and 40 percent do so daily.

A full 41 percent of tablet-owners multitask while watching TV every day, and 39 percent of smartphone users do as well.

About 36 percent of those ages 35 to 54 years old and 44 percent of those ages 55 to 64 now use their tablets while watching TV to dive deeper into programming. Nearly a third of users age 35 to 64 use tablets to check sports scores while watching games, and a majority of tablet owners use apps while watching TV, the study found.

Also, Nielsen found that social TV is increasingly a real phenomenon: 33 percent of Twitter (News - Alert) users had actively tweeted about TV-related content, while 44 percent of U.S. tablet owners and 38 percent of U.S. smartphone owners use their devices daily to access social media while watching TV.

This compares to 50 percent who do so in Latin America and 60 percent in Middle East and Africa.