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NewsON, Roku team up to make finding live local news easy for cord cutters

By Kris Wouk December 8, 2016

A hand holding a Roku remote.

One of the biggest things cord cutters find themselves missing out on is local news programming — sometimes websites and newspapers just aren’t enough. Roku and news streaming service NewsON are teaming up to solve this problem, bringing a new feature called Live News Zone to Roku devices.

“The Roku platform is designed to provide customers with convenient access to streamed content,” Roku vice president of content acquisition Ed Lee said in a statement. “Likewise, NewsON is known for delivering industry firsts and connecting viewers to live news content in a quick, effective way. The Live News Zone is user-friendly, helpful, and simple to use, and is a great addition to our combined services.”

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The new feature provides viewers with instant access to local news that is currently being broadcast — something that would otherwise generally require an antenna. More than 175 stations are supported, and up to 10 of the closest stations to a viewer will be shown at any given time, as long as they’re live at the time.

NewsON has already been offering similar programming via its own app for some time now. The service helps connect viewers with both live and on-demand local news — the first service to do so at such a scale.

“This new breakthrough on the Roku platform is the latest tangible example of our dedication to advancing viewer-friendly features and expanding the local TV news audience,” NewsON CEO Louis Gump said. “Over 120 local TV news stations can be live at one time in NewsON, which allows our viewers to have even quicker instant access to thousands of journalists covering stories that are relevant to them. Whether they want to watch live local news when traveling, or want to see local coverage of a major breaking news event from another city, NewsON now provides a unique way to stay connected to local news coverage wherever and whenever it breaks.”

In addition to the new Roku support, NewsON is available for iOS and Android as well as Amazon’s Fire tablets. For more information, see the NewsON website.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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