Tubi, an ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox, is expanding its “News on Tubi” offering in the U.S. with the addition of nearly 80 live local news feeds.
Station owners including Cox Media Group, Hearst Television, Scripps and Tegna are joining the service, which already includes Tubi’s current offering of 17 Fox Television stations and Altice USA’s News 12 New York. It means that Tubi will carry nearly 100 local station feeds in 2021 and cover 58 designated market areas. The company said more stations will be rolled out throughout the coming year.
Tubi said new feeds launching over the next week include WHBQ (Fox) in Memphis, KOKI (Fox) in Tulsa, WEWS (ABC) in Cleveland, WMUR (ABC) in Manchester, WTAE (ABC) in Pittsburgh, and WXYZ (ABC) in Detroit.
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News on Tubi is currently available on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Comcast Xfinity, Cox Contour, Xbox and Vizio. It includes content from NewsNow from Fox, Fox Soul, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Quicktake, NBC News Now, CBC, PeopleTV, WeatherNation, Cheddar, fubo Sports Network, Black News Channel, Euronews and Estrella News.
“Since News on Tubi launched in October, Tubi viewers have instantly taken hold of its value as a destination for a variety of free news choices, and we’re excited to bring the most comprehensive local news offering to streaming,” said Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi in a statement. “With live broadcasts covering nearly all of the top U.S. markets, Tubi is the AVOD home for local news around the country.”
During Fox’s most recent earnings call, the company didn’t provide a new monthly active user total for Tubi. In September, the company said the service had reached 33 million users.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch did say that over the first half of his company’s fiscal year, Tubi has seen its yearly unique viewers more than triple, total view time grow by nearly 70% and revenue more than double. He said that Tubi’s revenue for the past quarter approximated the service’s revenue for the entire fiscal year before Fox acquired it.