Maria Menounos: TV entertainment news a 'dying breed' as mobile use surges

Award-winning entertainment reporter Maria Menounos said recently that televised evening entertainment news is a "dying breed" in the mobile era.

The TV veteran — who has reported for shows like NBC’s “Access Hollywood,” “Extra” and E! News — told Yahoo Finance in an interview at the SALT Conference in Las Vegas that social media and cell phones was transforming how people consume celebrity news.

"What we’re seeing in my field in entertainment is no one needs to tune in anymore. You’re getting it on your mobile device,” Menounos said, lamenting how the birth of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s baby played out in the news cycle.

“You click and you watch it, and then you’re done. There’s no need to tune into the evening entertainment news," Menounos added.

A 2018 Pew Research poll found that nearly six in ten adults get their news from a mobile device, 19 percentage points higher than those who often get news on a desktop or laptop computer.

Amid a changing entertainment landscape, Menounos and her husband, producer Keven Undergaro, launched AfterBuzz TV. The digital broadcasting network is billing itself as "the ESPN of TV talk."

Menonous said that “we’re living in the golden era of television. People want to communicate about your favorite show. I don’t know about you, but I die to talk about my favorite shows, and nothing existed for it."

Eight years later, AfterBuzz TV operates out of 8 studios with over 300 hosts. Part of that expansion has been what the company considers its primary mission: Making quality content while serving the fan base.

"The second part of the mission is to help empower hosts and talent of all kinds and create kind of a safe haven for them in this Hollywood world, so that they can be nurtured and they can grow and not have to deal with some of the pitfalls of the industry,” Menounos added.

Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.