Telemundo 47: Noticias de NY

Review by eFreeware

Telemundo 47 is a Spanish-language news app built around one specific patch of the map: New York, New Jersey and the metropolitan area around them. That focus is the most distinctive thing about it. Rather than trying to serve a national audience, it reports on Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Newark and Jersey City, and it does so in Spanish, with the Hispanic community of the region as its stated audience.

The app comes from NBCUniversal Media and sits in the News & Magazines category. It has been listed since January 2013 and carries a 4.4 average from more than 5,300 ratings, with over 500,000 installs. It is free to download and supported by ads, and there are no in-app purchases to think about.

If you live in or near the city and want your local news, weather and live coverage in Spanish from a single app, this is the audience the developer is writing for. If you are outside that region, the geography itself tells you how much of it will be relevant to you.

Alerts tuned to where you actually are

The feature the developer leads with is personalization by location. You can set your news and weather alerts around where you are, so the stories and forecasts you get pushed are the ones tied to your area rather than a generic feed. The app also includes an Alerts Center, which collects breaking stories so you can catch up on anything you missed while you were away from your phone.

That combination is the part I would expect to matter most day to day. A regional news app lives or dies on whether its alerts are useful rather than noise, and giving readers control over which topics and places trigger them is the sensible way to approach it. The developer describes alerts for local, national and international news, plus separate categories for immigration, traffic and breaking news, so there is room to narrow things down to what you actually follow.

Severe weather gets its own treatment. You can save locations and set weather alerts for them, and the app covers storm, snow and flood warnings. For anyone in a region that deals with nor'easters, summer heat and coastal flooding, that is the kind of alert worth having switched on.

Forecasts, radar and widgets in one place

The weather side of the app is more developed than a simple forecast strip. It offers current conditions, a 10-day outlook for New York and New Jersey, and hourly forecasts with charts you can customize. It also reports the UV index and dew point alongside the usual temperature and conditions.

Live radar is included, with real-time tracking for New York, Long Island and New Jersey. Since you can save locations, the radar view is set up to follow the places you care about rather than a single fixed point. The recent update added home screen widgets in small and medium sizes, showing current conditions based on your location and staying in sync with the app; tapping one opens the full forecast. The same update also brought a reworked weather experience with customizable modules, a better locations center, simplified radar layers and updated alert settings.

On the news side, the app mixes reading and watching. You get articles and video reports from Telemundo 47 journalists, coverage of immigration, politics, public safety and traffic, and live newscasts and breaking coverage from the station. Local entertainment and sports video sit alongside that, and major events get live streams as they unfold.

There is also Telemundo 47 Responde, the consumer assistance strand, which handles investigations and reports and takes up cases on behalf of viewers. It is an unusual thing for a local news app to carry, and it gives the app a community role beyond headlines.

What the app asks of you

The basics are straightforward: the app is free, it carries advertising, and there is nothing to buy inside it. You do not need to pay for the news, the forecast or the radar.

Creating a profile has benefits. Signing in with an NBCUniversal profile lets you save articles and videos for later and sync your preferences and newsletters. If you already have an NBCUniversal account, that is one less set of credentials to keep track of.

The main requirement is geographic. Its reporting, forecasts, radar coverage and alerts are all oriented to one region, so the value you get scales with how close you are to it.

Getting the most from it

The first thing worth doing is setting your location and choosing which alert categories you want. The app lets you tailor news and weather alerts, and narrowing the list early is better than letting everything through and muting it all a week later. If immigration, traffic or public safety are the topics you follow closely, those can be separated from general breaking news.

For weather, saving the places you travel between is the practical move. Radar and alerts then follow those locations instead of only your current position, which matters if you split time between, say, the city and a part of New Jersey. The small and medium widgets are a low-effort way to keep current conditions visible without opening anything.

When something big is happening, the live streams are the reason to keep the app installed. Newscasts, press conferences and developing coverage are all carried live, and the Alerts Center is there for catching up afterwards. For quieter stretches, saving articles and videos to your profile gives you something to come back to.

The recent update also points to an email address for feedback, which suggests the weather section is still being actively reworked. If the widgets or the new modules are what you care about, updating to the current version is worth doing.

Where the Spanish-language focus pays off

Plenty of news apps cover New York. What sets this one apart is that it does so in Spanish, for a specific community, with the coverage choices that implies. Immigration is treated as a standing beat rather than an occasional story, and Telemundo 47 Responde exists to take up consumer problems on viewers' behalf. That is a different editorial posture from a general-purpose city news app.

The trade-off is scope. It is a local newsroom's app, and the weather tools, radar and alerts are all built around one metropolitan region. Readers who want a broad national digest will find the frame narrower than they need.

The ads are part of the deal at this price, and the app is free with no purchases attached. For a station app, that is a familiar arrangement, and it keeps the news, forecasts and live streams open to anyone who installs it.

A local newsroom in your pocket

Telemundo 47 is a well-established app with a clear purpose: Spanish-language news, weather and live coverage for the New York metropolitan area. The combination of location-based alerts, a full weather section with radar and widgets, live newscasts and the Responde consumer strand gives it more range than a simple headline feed.

I would point it at Spanish-speaking residents of New York, New Jersey and the surrounding area who want their local news and forecasts from one app, especially anyone who follows immigration, traffic or severe weather closely. The 4.4 average from over 5,300 ratings suggests that audience has been reasonably satisfied with what it gets.

If you are outside the region, or you want a broad national news digest rather than a local one, the app's focus will feel narrow. For everyone inside its map, it is a free and thoroughly regional option, ads included.

What's new in version 8.9

Los widgets del tiempo ya están aquí. Agrega widgets pequeños o medianos para ver condiciones actuales en tu pantalla de inicio. Toca cualquier widget para ver el pronóstico completo. Además: una experiencia del tiempo renovada con módulos personalizables, mejor experiencia de usuario, un mejor centro de ubicaciones, capas de radar simplificadas y configuraciones de alertas actualizadas. Califica nuestra app en el App Store y envíanos tus comentarios a [email protected]