In case you were wondering why Yahoo decided to buy almost 40 years worth of Saturday Night Live “classic clips,” the company made its plans a bit clearer today. It’s launching a new mobile app called Screen, and the S.N.L. clips are part of the app’s cornerstone content.
In addition to the S.N.L. content, Yahoo has a new deal with Viacom to bring Comedy Central content to its app, including The Daily Show and this fall’s new comedy lineup. The app also features content from The Onion and ABC News.
For now, Yahoo Screen is only available for iOS devices. Although Android is now the world’s leading smartphone operating system, the iPad is still the world’s top-selling tablet, and people are more likely to watch a TV show on a tablet than on a smartphone.
In designing Screen, Yahoo’s New York team tried to mimic the TV viewing experience as much as possible. Users swipe the screen to move between channels or between TV episodes. The app also has a feature called trending clips to show users what others are watching.
Yahoo has a long way to go if it wants to dominate mobile video viewing the way it once dominated Internet searches. The partnership with Viacom is a great start, but to compete with the broadcast networks Yahoo will need to eventually offer users the ability to view the current night’s TV shows on mobile devices. ABC has started down this path with its Watch ABC app, and Aereo is offering mobile users a way to bypass the cable networks by delivering broadcast TV directly to mobile devices.
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