Top Roku Free News Channels

I'm here because I wanna give you a few ways that you can stay informed even if you are a cord cutter who doesn't have access to cable or satellite with their constant newsfeeds.

It can still be done. Today we're gonna go over a few of the top Roku news channels for 2023. You can use these channels to get live news or news clips, whichever you prefer.

Today, I'm going to be using my Roku device to do that, and I'll walk through a few apps on the Roku device, but a lot of these apps are going to be available on other devices as well. If you're not a Roku user, but you're on Amazon Fire, you use Chromecast, or Apple TV, a lot of this stuff will be available. There may be some other options on those platforms as well, so if you have any other thoughts or questions after this video is done, hit the comments.

If you're an Apple TV user, an Amazon Fire user, or if there's something else on Roku that you would recommend, please comment. I'm just gonna go through a few options today. So, let's dive in.

Let's dive into the Roku platform here. Like I said, what we're looking for are ways to stay informed, especially ways to stay informed for free. I'm gonna skip past something YouTube TV, for example. YouTube TV is a great place to get all your cable news channel feeds, your local stuff, whatever the case may be, but you gotta pay $73 a month for it, so we're gonna skip past that.

My first stop is actually gonna be the Roku Channel. Believe it or not, if you are a Roku user, and you can access the Roku Channel, there are some live news feeds that you can access on your menu. You can pop down here to news, sports, and entertainment, and you can see there's Newsy, NewsMax, ABC News, etc.

There are some options here that you can pop into and watch some live feeds. It's not necessarily the best one, it's not the one that I recommend most highly, but if you do like the Roku Channel, and you find yourself in there pretty frequently, then there is some stuff to keep you informed.

The next option that I'll mention is Haystack TV. I brought this up on a previous video, it’s kind of a hidden gems video. Haystack TV is great for local and world news, for free, but it's probably one of my less favorite options in this category, when it's up against some other news options that we have.

The problem with this is that you're not gonna get a lot of live stuff on Haystack TV, if you get any live stuff at all. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure, but mostly, what you're gonna be getting is segments from various places around the country, so there will be, you know, a five-minute segment, a three-minute segment, on whatever the topic is. So this may not be the best way to get live coverage, but part of the problem with live coverage is you can get over-saturated, right?

If you're the type of person who likes to just let someone else curate the news that they're taking in, then Haystack TV is gonna have a lot of those clips that are pulled out, the actual relevant stuff.

If you like live stuff, then look for these types of channels. I'm pulling up CBS News, you can also do this with ABC, and I believe NBC News has a channel app. Just watch out for the cable providers: CNN, Fox News, I think MSNBC, they have channel apps, but you will need a cable or satellite subscription to access those.

Generally speaking, you know how to access most of the stuff on those. But, in a news channel like CBS News, it is going to provide you with live feeds. And if we pop in here it says "Joining CBSN Live," this is gonna be their main feed for CBS News.

If you go back to the menu, there are a few other options around the country. Roku doesn't cover the whole country, but some of the bigger markets out there are covered such as New York, the Bay Area, and Denver is in here. So there are a few places where you can pop in and get localized coverage. A lot of times the feeds are gonna be the same, especially if there's something like a news conference going on, but there are a few of those local options.

The other one that I will mention is NewsON. If you want local news on Roku, then this is the place you wanna go. NewsON is one of my top 10, just absolute top 10, favorite Roku news channels, and NewsON is going to give you local news where you live.

In my case, KUTV in Salt Lake City, that's where I live, roughly, at least that's the market I'm in, so you can see that. You can see other nearby stations, in this case we go to Boise or Casper, but in this case, if I wanna see coronavirus coverage, they've got a whole section here for me, and I can see this coverage based on region. So if it's a region that I'm in, and I want to, you know, check in on that, or maybe if I have family members around the country, I can do that with Northeast, Southeast, Western, local coronavirus coverage, and this one is going to have live feeds from participating stations. Or you can go to all stations and search by state. Pretty convenient that way. NewsON is a fantastic resource if you want those local live stations.

The last one that I'll mention here is, believe it or not, Pluto TV. Pluto TV is, as you may or may not know, is kind of a, it's a list of free live TV channels, right? This looks and feels a lot like cable, but it's not cable. This is a cord-cutting service, but you can see they kind of have the grid like you're used to with cable here.

But, if you pop over here, there are different categories, and if I go to the news section, there are several news channels, including what I talked about before. There's NBC News, CBS News, I think ABC is around here somewhere, there is even a CNN feed.

So you can hop into Pluto TV news channel, and get a lot of those kinds of national news channels, get their coverage, all in the PlutoTV news channel. Highly recommended, and that'll keep you up to date, like I said, in a more national, general way. But there may be other apps if you want the local stuff, NewsON, for instance.

So there you go, there are a few resources for you to stay informed. And hopefully, this will help you going forward.

It's always important to stay informed, and cord-cutters can do that with these top Roku news channels for 2023.

You don't need a cable subscription or a satellite subscription to stay informed, so if, like I said, at the beginning, you have any other options that you would like to let people know about, hit the comments below.

If you're a Fire TV user, or an Apple TV user, hit those comments, and let us know what your favorite news apps, free news apps, are on those platforms. Thanks for watching, everybody. I will see you next time. Stay safe out there.