Back in the early 2000s, my radio job didn’t pay much but I cobbled together cheap satellite TV packages to spend my off-hours channel surfing coast-to-coast.
Through satellite waivers, DirecTV brought in the big four network affiliates from New York and Los Angeles. DISH Network brought in five “SuperStations” from New York, Boston, Denver, and LA, along with a few other network affiliates from Dallas and Atlanta.
At one point, I was channel surfing 15 out-of-market feeds from a half-dozen cities, along with my local stations, and staying up way too late watching “Star Trek: TNG” reruns from across the country. It seemed pretty good at the time.
Now, I’m channel surfing from coast-to-coast once again after one platform seems to have finally made the livestreaming experience comparable to “real” TV.
Live streams of local TV news are nothing new. They’ve been around for a couple of decades. But what was once an often frustrating experience of low-quality video, commercials starting at random times, and feeds that cut out at the end of the newscast has finally evolved into what feels like a “real” TV experience.
But a stream that feels like “real” TV is only half of it. The other half is getting it to load consistently and quickly like a “real” TV.
Service after service has struggled with this. Some apps and streams still take forever to start, if they ever load at all, and then require you to sit through a pre-roll ad every time you change channel.
Recently, I was excited to discover that Roku seems to have fixed this problem. Their “Live TV” function, one of dozens of providers of “free ad-supported TV” (FAST) channels, seems to channel-surf just like the old satellite and cable boxes.
For the media nerd, Roku’s Live TV lineup now includes 65 news streams from local TV stations in major cities. It appears all of the ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC owned-and-operated stations are included along with larger-market stations owned by Cox and Gray. (Disclosure: I work for Gray but an not involved in this effort.)
For the Upper Midwest, that includes news feeds from WCCO-TV and KMSP Minneapolis, along with WITI Milwaukee. That points out the major drawback for broadcasters: medium and small-market stations are not represented.
While there are other services that combine multiple feeds from various groups of local TV stations, many still seem to struggle with functionality and none seems to have as complete of collection of big-city channels as Roku’s Live TV.
To be clear, I’m talking solely here about channels available through Roku’s Live TV app. Just about every local TV station in the country offers a livestream through standalone apps, which Roku confusingly refers to as “channels,” on Roku and other platforms.
Actually finding the local TV feeds from across the country can be kind of challenging. They’re all the way at the bottom of the Live TV channel list, and since Roku remotes don’t have digits, you can’t just punch in the channel number (even though they assign channel numbers anyway).
The best way seems to be to go into the “Recommended” section and scroll up, which puts you at the end of the “All Channels” list where the local news feeds are located. They are sorted by market size, rather than region.
Then, set one or two of the channels as a “favorite” so you can find it later. To channel surf, then go back to that channel and scroll up or down. (Unlike the old satellite TV days, you can’t set Roku Live TV to only scroll through your favorites. The up or down arrow will take you to the neighboring channel whether or not it is a favorite.)
Of course, the feeds aren’t exactly like the old satellite days. They’re all-news channels, combining simulcasts of live newscasts with other content. Some stations revert to national news feeds when they’re not live, resulting in the same content appearing on multiple channels.
But the experience still feels like “real” TV.
Channel surfing is back.
Disclosure: Jon Ellis is an employee of Gray Media Group. The statements and views expressed in this posting are his own and do not reflect those of Gray Media Group.