Weather Channel launches standalone live feed of its linear feed to connected TV platforms

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

The Weather Channel has launched what appears to be at least one of its direct-to-consumer streaming offerings.

Now known as “The Weather Channel TV App,” the service is initially only available on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Xfinity Flex devices, but notably leaves out any desktop or mobile browser or Apple TV users for now.

The service sells for $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year and includes a 7-day free trial.

It provides customers with a live stream of the Weather Channel linear feed as well as access to on-demand access to select nonfiction series and access to local forecasts.

The Weather Channel originally announced plans to launch The Weather Channel Plus but so far that has yet to launch and it’s not immediately clear if the TV App is taking the place of that offering or will be in addition to it.

The Weather Channel Plus was slated to be a more expensive product, at around $4.99 a month, and would combine content from the Weather Channel plus Local Now and other Entertainment Studios offerings such as Pets.tv, Recipe.tv or Comedy.tv.

No content from those services is included in the current version of the app, though they are heavily promoted during the feed’s normal commercial breaks, which appear to be different from what linear subscribers see.

This offering is somewhat unique in the pay-TV industry in that most networks have agreements with cable, satellite and IPTV providers that they can’t stream their linear feed live unless users who already have a subscription to one of those services authenticate via a system commonly called TV Everywhere, so it essentially becomes a bonus of paying for TV in your home.

However, the Weather Channel apparently doesn’t have such restrictions with its carriers and was able to circumvent that limitation to offer its feed directly to consumers.

Some streamers from cable and network TV providers do offer shows to streaming-only customers after a waiting period of 24 hours or so.