“Local Now is an innovative new service that gives our customers the ability to immediately catch up on local news, traffic, weather and sports and stay connected to their communities,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Sling TV. “Our customers have been asking for local content since our launch, and we anticipate expanding our local offering as the service evolves.”
“For the first time your news is available instantly on demand. Local news when you want it and where you are,” said Dave Shull, CEO of The Weather Channel television network. “The old television broadcast news model is outdated for the emerging world of OTT. We are proud to be part of Sling TV as they lead the charge.”
How it works
Local Now provides timely localized updates relevant to 207 markets (think LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Tallahassee, etc.), in partnership with some of the most trusted news sources across the U.S., including The Weather Channel, the Associated Press, SportRadar, TrafficLand, and INRIX. Its localized content cycles on a short loop that’s refreshed at the top of every hour. So if you miss something, you can catch it again only a few minutes later.
If you are not located in one of the market areas currently supported, users will receive a national feed that shows regional weather and 60NOW, which is the section of the bottom of the channel that shows Weather, Traffic, News and Sports.
What’s particularly unique about Local Now is that it identifies the city that you’re in based on your IP address. In other words, it will deliver the news, weather, sports and traffic specific to the market you’re in, when you tune in. It’s a great feature for travelers (for both work and pleasure) who like to stay well-informed on current events based on your location!
Local Now is currently available on Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablets, Android smartphones and tablets, Android TV platforms including Google’s Nexus Player, Chromecast, Roku players, Macs and PCs, and we’re continuing to roll it out to the remainder of Sling TV supported devices in the coming weeks.
Roku devices will have access to Local Now once the user manually updates their Roku or when Roku pushes the automatic update in the next day or two.
If you are not located in one of the market areas currently supported, users will receive a national feed that shows regional weather and 60NOW, which is the section of the bottom of the channel that shows Weather, Traffic, News and Sports.
Well it is not the full Weather Channel that many had hopped for it does fill in a missing piece for Sling TV’s lineup.
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