With its iView catchup TV service among a series of apps serving the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the public service broadcaster is billing its latest as ‘unlike anything currently in the market’.

Describing it as a long-form tablet app, ABC’s Angela Clark says that it will be ‘magazine-like, with a weekly publication schedule and intended to be available in the Apple and Android newsstands where it will be next to tablet editions of existing magazines and newspapers’.

Drawing on a mix of video, audio and written content from across the corporation’s activities as well as material from the ABC archives, the free app will focus on current affairs, with eight to ten stories a week.

‘We have a lot of rich media and video content, and a lot of it is in a linear form, so we’re looking at exploring that inner form that’s not linear that gives people time to absorb it in different ways to enter the story,’ Clark explains.

‘The behaviour that we’re seeing around tablets, is that it is your “book before bed”, where you go and have some personal space more in-depth time rather than that breaking news habit,’ she adds.

As well as targetting the existing ABC audience, the app is expected to reach a younger demographic, as well as broadening the channel’s market share.