In 2019, broadcasting giant Sinclair took a stab at streaming with STIRR, a free service with live channels and on-demand shows and movies. It was once seen as one of the best free ad-supported streaming services on the market. Sinclair, however, is in the process of selling the service, which now offers just a fraction of what it used to offer.
The soon-to-be new owner of STIRR is a company called Thinking Media, according to a newly updated term of service page confirmed by Cord Cutters News. The company is described as a pioneer in cloud solutions for streaming services with a focus on ad-supported streaming services. According to their LinkedIn page, the company launched in 2023. The exact terms of the sale have not been announced at this time.
Sinclair and Thinking Media could not be reached for comment at this time.
STIRR once had over 100 free live channels with over 5,000 hours of movies and TV shows, along with live local news. Now, the service offers just four live channels and a handful of mostly unknown movies and TV shows on-demand. Sinclair has removed all live news from the service.
It seems that with this sale, none of the content deals Sinclair made for the free ad-supported streaming service were included. It is unknown at this time what they will be doing with the service and how it will compete.
STIRR was best known for some exclusive live channels that were offered only on STIRR, including live feeds of some digital content owned by Sinclair.
The number of viewers for STIRR is unknown, but on Google Play, the app has just 100,000+ downloads compared to more than 100 million for Pluto TV and Tubi.
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