Reminder: AP-Fed Wii News Hits Saturday

[wraggster]

Don't forget, this Saturday the Wii News Channel launches, pumping Associated Press stories and photos directly to your television.

Hey, I'm on there sometimes, maybe you'll see my stuff. Sa-weet!

AP reports, go figure, that there are no "immediate plans" to sell advertising space on the New Channel and that news will be displayed through an interactive map.

"The beauty of it is it zooms in and out of areas of the world," said Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo's U.S. headquarters in Redmond. "So if you really want to focus on regional news or national news versus international, you just blow up the map of the U.S."
AP has a two-year contract to provide news and photos to Nintendo and might one day also provide multimedia as well. The contract includes the Associated Press providing news for the Wii in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and Swiss-German. Japanese news will come from Goo... that's right Goo!

via kotaku

[hp1]

Is it just a US launch or worldwide?

[snkrock25]

umm wii news is live now. I downloaded it 6:45AM est. Just thought you guys would like to know. credit would be appreciated

[strumstrum]

yes I downloaded earlier, and after a good mess around with I can honestly say it is superb, it seems to use the same menu as the photo channel and you can even read the news as a slideshow and it runs off the headers and then you click if you want to read the full story, it also uses the weather globe and you can navigate the news that way, + it has already had 3 news updates since 10am, if they get the weather channel to update as regular then they are in for a winning formula...