NEW YORK—Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley confirmed on Thursday that his company’s rumored streaming service Stirr will be launching soon.
Speaking during NAB Show New York, Ripley said the service will include local news and syndicated entertainment content. Stirr will be an ad-supported service and will have a combination of linear and on-demand content.
Ripley said Sinclair’s Stirr team is based in Los Angeles and Seattle and that the Tennis Channel team is helping to run the service.
He said Sinclair is partnering with online video channels such as Fail Army and Pet Collective for programming on Stirr and added that Sinclair will absolutely talk with Comcast about integrating and redistributing Stirr.
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Reports about Sinclair’s plans for Stirr surfaced over the summer when BuzzFeed spotted a trademark application for the name.
The trademark covered the streaming of multimedia content, television programming and films through a web-based subscription service.
A national streaming service featuring Sinclair’s local news content will effectively put the company in competition with other news networks that have already launched or will soon launch news streaming services.
CBS News already has a 24/7 ad-supported news streaming service. And later this year, Fox News will launch Fox Nation, a subscription streaming service.
"With our traditional cable viewership at an all-time high, we are proud to announce a new digital offering geared entirely toward the FOX News superfans, who represent the most loyal audience in cable, if not all of television,” said John Finley, senior vice president of development and production for Fox News, in a statement.