Amazon Fire TV expands live local news streaming to 88 cities
You can now watch your local news stations for free on Fire TV.
Amazon is expanding the local news coverage it offers for free on its Fire TV platform. On Thursday the e-commerce giant announced it will begin rolling out "live and on-demand local news" inside its News app to 88 "major cities" across the country including Detroit, Phoenix, New Orleans and Orlando.
The announcement follows an initial 12-city launch last year which saw the company provide live news coverage in a variety of cities including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco as well as its hometown of Seattle. A full list of cities can be found in Amazon's blog post.
To provide the news, Amazon has reached agreements with a number of distributors including ABC Owned Television Stations, CBSN, TEGNA, Cox, The E.W. Scripps Company, and Altice USA. These companies own or operate channels that are affiliated with ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW.
In New York, for example, the service will let you watch the local ABC 7 news program (which is owned by ABC), CBSN NY (owned by ViacomCBS) as well as News 12 (owned by Altice). Those in Chicago can watch the news on Kiro 7, a CBS affiliate owned by Cox.
Amazon's News app will let you choose your location.
Going to the local news tab in the Amazon News app will allow you to select your location and show you which stations are available. The news broadcasts will be available live as well as on-demand. If you want to watch the national news, such as ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, you will need to switch to the national ABC News Live channel instead of staying on the local feed.
National news sites available on the app include ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters and Cheddar.