Amazon wants to make it easier for its Fire TV users to be updated with not just national headlines but more importantly, local news. After launching the free Amazon News App last year and expanding to more cities earlier this year, they are now making more local news channels available in more cities. They are now supporting local stations in 150 U.S cities, with some metro areas having more than one local station. This is available to all users of Fire TV devices in the U.S.
The Amazon News App is available for free on all Fire TV devices and you don’t need to subscribe or add anything to it. You’ll be able to access the local news for the city you’re in. Just go to the “Local News” tab within the app and you’ll see the supported local stations near you. Your device automatically detects the nearest metro area to you and will have added all the available local news stations in that tab.
While the News app is available now in 158 cities across the country, there are actually 259 supported local stations since some of the bigger cities have more than one station. Some of the major cities added include Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, and a dozen other cities. You can check out the full list of cities and the local stations added and see which one you’ll probably get in the Local News tab.
Aside from navigating to the tab, you can also access it by using Alexa voice commands. Just say, “Alexa, play local news” using the Alexa Voice Remote or if you have one of those hand-free TVs like the Amazon Fire TV Omni Series. Just like the other free live TV streaming services on smart TVs (like Roku Channel, Plex TV, Pluto TV, etc), you’ll have ads playing every once in a while as you use the app.
Aside from local news, you also get national news channels like ABC Nes, Bloomberg TV+, CBS News, People TV, USA Today, etc. You’ll be able to get a custom playlist based on the kind of news you’re interested in.The Amazon News app is already baked into your Fire TV so you don’t need to download another app.
