Report updated Apr 10, 2026
13 WREX
For residents of the Rockford, Illinois and Southern Wisconsin area who require timely local news, severe weather alerts, and regional sports updates.
13 WREX is a challenged news app that is completely free. With a 4.5/5 rating from 290 reviews, it faces significant user friction. Users particularly appreciate customization, though broken notification links remains a common concern.
What Is 13 WREX?
Which Momentum?
v3.1
• Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Active Nemesis
WIFR News
By Gray Television Group
Other Rivals
7-Day Rank Pulse 🇺🇸
No ranking data
Recent User Mood 🇺🇸
What makes this app unique?
What Does It Look Like?
What Is The App Momentum?
Loading...
What Are The Key Features?
Includes interactive radar, alert room, map room, and school/non-school closing information
Comprehensive reporting on news, crime, business, and education specific to the Rockford and Stateline area
Access to 13 WREX live broadcasts and on-demand video content
Who is it for & how much does it cost?
Target Audience
Residents of the Rockford, Illinois and Southern Wisconsin area who require timely local news, severe weather alerts, and regional sports updates.
Pricing
Free- Free access to all news, weather, and video content
The app serves as a free distribution channel likely monetized through in-app advertising and driving traffic to the broadcaster's primary website.
Who Built It?
Enrichment in progress
Publisher profile available very soon
What other apps does Allen Media Broadcasting make?
User Sentiment
iIndependent intel reports to help builders create better apps. Accuracy improves every day. For informational purposes only.Medium confidence · 11 reviews available
What is the recent mood?
“Recent user voice shows a frustrated sentiment. Users appreciate customization, but report broken notification links and technical stability and performance.”
What Users Love
Love how you can custom the home page!
What Frustrates Users
when you click on the notification it doesn't pull up the story
Don't like getting notifications and then clicking it not to be directed to the story
Too many wasted notifications killing battery
once a week, I get a blank screen & have to reset preferences
Fails to get past 94 percent download
What is the competitive landscape for 13 WREX?
How's The News Market?
Market outlook for this category
Available very soon
News Market Trend
News market trend & dynamics
Available very soon
The rivals identified
The Nemesis
Head to Head
WIFR currently holds the market edge due to superior scale and technical reliability. While WREX users appreciate the content quality, the technical friction in notification delivery is a critical weakness that WIFR exploits with a more stable platform.
What sets 13 WREX apart
- +
Higher average App Store rating (4.6 vs 4.4) indicating high satisfaction among the core user base
- +
Stronger emphasis on community engagement features like 'Ask The Expert'
What's WIFR News's Edge
- -
Much larger active user base (6x the rating count on iOS)
- -
Superior technical stability; WREX users report significant issues with broken notification links
Contenders
MyStateline Eyewitness News
★4.6 (787)Nexstar Broadcasting
The digital home for WTVO (ABC) and WQRF (FOX) in Rockford, serving the same geographic audience with a dual-station content pool.
Aggregates content from two major network affiliates (ABC and FOX) in one app
Heavy emphasis on 'Stateline' regional identity rather than just Rockford city limits
NewsBreak: Local News & Alerts
★4.8 (1349K)Particle Media Inc.
A dominant local news aggregator that pulls content from various Rockford sources, often outranking local station apps in search results.
AI-driven personalization that learns user interests faster than static station apps
Massive national scale with hyper-local granularity
Peers
Advanced proprietary forecasting models and high-fidelity radar maps
National-level resources for severe weather tracking
Rockford Register Star, IL
★4.3 (272)Gannett
The digital presence of Rockford's primary newspaper, competing for the same local advertising dollars and news-hungry audience.
Deep-dive investigative text journalism vs. the video-first approach of WREX
Subscription-based model for premium local insights
New Kids on the Block
Real-time user-generated content that often beats newsrooms to the scene
Direct integration with home security hardware
The outtake for 13 WREX
SWOT Analysis
Core Strengths
- Storm Track 13 weather branding
- High iOS rating (4.6) among core users
- Home page customization features
- Community engagement tools like 'Ask The Expert'
Critical Frictions
- Broken deep-linking from push notifications
- Technical bugs (94% download error, blank screens)
- High battery consumption
- Smaller user base compared to market leader WIFR
Growth Levers
- Expanding news coverage to North and West Rockford areas
- Improving notification reliability to regain market share from WIFR
- Leveraging community engagement to build a more loyal user base than aggregators
Market Threats
- WIFR's superior scale and technical stability
- Neighbors by Ring's disruption of real-time crime reporting
- NewsBreak's AI-driven content personalization
What are the next best moves?
Fix notification deep-linking architecture
Broken notification links are the #1 complaint theme and directly prevent users from accessing content, leading to immediate churn.
Resolve '94% download' and blank screen bugs
These critical stability issues prevent app usage entirely for a segment of the user base, as noted in technical performance complaints.
Audit and expand geographic news coverage
Users specifically cited a lack of news for North and West Rockford, representing a content gap that competitors could exploit.
Feature Gaps vs Competitors
- Standardized stable app templates (available in WIFR/Gray Television but missing here)
- AI-driven personalization (available in NewsBreak but missing here)
- Real-time UGC video alerts (available in Neighbors by Ring but missing here)
Key Takeaways
13 WREX has a strong brand in 'Storm Track 13' weather, but it is currently losing the technical battle to WIFR News. If I were the PM, I would halt all feature development to fix the broken notification-to-story pipeline, as this technical friction is sabotaging the app's primary value as a real-time news source.
Where Is It Heading?
Declining
Upset user base due to broken notification links—a core product function.
Persistent technical debt (94% download bug) indicates lack of QA in recent releases.
Recent updates focused only on 'bug fixes' with no new feature investment to counter WIFR's scale.