Amazon said it is adding on-demand local news in 88 more cities to the news app on Fire TV.

The stories come from stations owned by The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Television Stations, CBSN, Tegna, Cox, The E.W. Scripps Co. and Altice USA.

Amazon introduced local news last year in 12 cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Also Read: Comcast’s Vudu to Launch on Amazon Fire TV

“Local news helps our customers stay connected to important issues and updates within their communities,” said Charlotte Maines, director of Amazon Fire TV. “In the last year especially, local news has been incredibly helpful in an uncertain environment and our viewers continue to ask for more news options. This expansion will bring a truly local experience to both Fire TV and the streaming industry.”

Newly added markets include Detroit, Phoenix, New Orleans, Salt Lake City and Orlando.

“Our distribution with Amazon provides viewers access to 49 local Tegna station brands they know and trust most for the highest quality local news,” said Adam Ostrow, chief digital officer, Tegna. “Local news is more important than ever to the communities we serve, and Fire TV and the Amazon news app help us deliver the stories and information that matter most to our audience regardless of which platform they use to consume news content.”

The service would compete with Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stirr and VuIT, launched last year by Syncbak with an investment by Gray Television.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Scripps is committed to serving local viewers on every platform with accurate, reliable news and information that helps them live better lives,” said Brian Lawlor, Scripps’ president of local media. “Amazon’s thoughtful expansion of local news content on its Fire TV devices is a strong testament to the power of local news to keep communities safe and informed through everything 2020 has brought us, and everything ahead in 2021.”

Amazon’s news app is free and supported with advertising. 

In addition to local news providers, it includes content from ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters, Cheddar, Entertainment Weekly and Black News Channel.

Among users of the legacy HBO Now app just before the launch of the new, broader HBO Max service, 29% are still using the older application.

The data comes courtesy of streaming analytics/consumer guide service provider Reelgood, which compared a cohort of of HBO Now users’ activity in the two weeks before the May 27 HBO Max launch to their HBO activity in the two weeks after. In those 14 post launch days, 29% were still using the legacy app to access HBO programming.

Reelgood said it connected data from 2 million U.S. active users, based on 32 million interactions with the Reelgood recommendation platform.

Notably, legacy HBO Now users have every incentive to upgrade--they get a lot more content for the same $14.99 a month with HBO Max. And AT&T and its WarnerMedia division have not been able to reach distribution terms with the two biggest connected TV operating system companies, Roku and Amazon.

As Variety stated in a pretty compelling deep dive into those impasses, they have likely “stunted” the uptake of the new HBO Max service.

For now, users of OTT devices powered by Roku and Amazon Fire TV only have access to the legacy HBO Now app, which will be renamed as simply “HBO” after July 31.

Also after July 31, as Variety noted, Amazon Fire TV’s distribution deal for that legacy app expires. So if no agreement between WarnerMedia and Amazon is reached by that time, Fire TV users will have no access to HBO at all.

Adding to the drama: Comcast and NBCUniversal’s big contribution to the streaming wars, Peacock, is set to expand its rollout Wednesday over the open internet, also without Roku and Amazon support.

Also read: Google and Android TV Threaten Roku and Amazon for Connected TV Dominance

Research company Conviva said in a recent report that 44% of connected TV usage in the U.S. occurs over Roku-powered devices, while 19% happens on Fire TV gadgets.

As Variety also noted, the impasses with WarnerMedia and NBCU have less to do with subscription revenue sharing and more to do with things like disaggregation of HBO Max and Peacock services in the respective platforms’ “channels” stores, as well as how advertising revenue is split.

Amazon is reportedly in development on a networked DVR that would compliment its Fire TV OTT device by offering the ability to record live TV.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with Amazon’s plan, Bloomberg said the online retail giant is developing the device within the confines of its Lab 126 R&D center—the unit that developed Fire TV, as well as the Echo product line. Bloomberg said the DVR project has been dubbed “Frank.” Amazon is not confirming the project at this point.

Related: Amazon Unleashes the Fire TV Cube

According to the report, the DVR would connect to a user’s Wi-Fi network (and not directly to a TV, as is the case with traditional DVRs).

“Frank” would record live-streamed video, and users would access that video over Wi-Fi, using OTT devices like Fire TV, connected smart TVs, laptop computers, tablets and smart phones.

The report did not make clear as to whether the device would merely record over-the-air broadcast channels, or live-streamed content from Amazon Channels, as well.

Bloomberg tied a 10% drop in TiVo’s stock price Friday to the Amazon leak. However, as TiVo exits the hardware business, Variety noted that the Frank sounds more like networked DVR devices made by Tablo

The Bloomberg report said that Amazon also plans to update its Fire TV stick with new software.

Fire TV over-the-top devices have been hot sellers for Amazon, allowing the company to effectively execute its strategy of using video services to expose customers to its broader retail environment. 

As part of the celebration of its second year of existence, Sling TV is offering a free preview of the service to new customers this weekend, tied in with the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead on Feb. 12.

In a periscope event for SingTV’s second birthday, CEO Roger Lynch said the free preview – available on www.SlingTV.com/watchfree -- will also allow TWD fans to access AMC Network’s marathon of the zombie series, a big hit with Sling TV customers.

Lynch added that during this month (February) Sling TV will offer free previews of premium channels Home Box Office and Starz at different parts of the month. In addition, he added that digital video recorder capability will be available via Amazon Fire, Android Mobile and Android TV “very soon.” Following those launches, DVR capability will extend to Apple TV at a future date. Sling TV began beta testing DVR service via Roku in December

For most Americans, television is in a new “golden age.”

We have more diverse choices — and a richer menu of sports, news, education and entertainment available than ever. There’s more direct streaming from the likes of HBO and Netflix, more services like Apple TV and Amazon Fire, and more innovative devices from Roku boxes to wall-size smart TVs with cross-platform search.

We are in the midst of a revolution — one that is allowing television and video to serve the multicultural world that is the America we celebrate. And it has birthed new and diverse voices like my network, Crossings TV, which offers hyper-local programming in six different languages in markets throughout the United States, serving communities that are too often shut out or overlooked.

Yet worrisome new federal regulations proposed by Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, with the support of large technology companies such as Google, have thrown a dark cloud over this revolution — one that could deprive many communities of the tailored, in-language program options we have worked so hard to provide.

Big Tech ‘Poachers’

Under the FCC’s proposed new rules (known commonly as “AllVid” after an earlier industry lobbying eff ort the Obama administration rejected in 2010), big technology companies such as Google would be given the right to poach the program license deals we negotiate with pay TV providers like DirecTV or Time Warner Cable without being bound to the underlying license terms that help fund our networks and ensure they get enough exposure to thrive.

The FCC chairman says the rule is intended to create competition for set-top box devices. He argues that exempting these companies from the obligation to negotiate for rights will enable them to focus on developing new boxes to repackage your existing programming and place it alongside the more underfunded Internet video in a single “cross -platform” search.

It’s an odd argument on behalf of competition — asking the federal government to subsidize the most wealthy companies so that they can bring more search and advertising services into our living rooms and require yet another in-home box.

Leaving aside that the rationale for this giveaway to Big Tech is totally undermined by the fact that smart TVs and other home gateways already provide cross-platform search, there is an even more compelling reason to oppose the AllVid mandate: It will likely bring us less diversity, not more, in television’s golden age.

Today, small and niche networks like mine can negotiate for channel placement they think will help them be seen by their target audience and can cross-promote with other networks to gain exposure from potential fans.

Crossings TV has grown because it has been able to create meaningful local programming in partnership with locally based multichannel distributors — builders of infrastructure and creators of jobs who are physically on the ground in the communities we serve.

But the Wheeler “AllVid” rule directly attacks that crucial system and allows tech firms to disregard negotiated terms such as channel placement, digital rights and much else.

At the Box’s Mercy

Further, the cross-search function leaves our channels all at the mercy of the new box’s often-mysterious algorithms — notorious for burying disfavored and smaller companies in its ash heap. The dedicated viewers who value networks like Crossings TV have no currency with Google, its fellow Silicon Valley technology inhabitants or profit-maximizing cross-platform search algorithms. Certainly many have observed that the Google workforce looks nothing like the diverse communities it purports to serve. For programmers like Crossings, these giant new boxes could mean a one way ticket to the back of the bus.

While working to create an African-American focused search browser through Blackbirdhome.com, I saw this problem up close when the Google search algorithm consistently buried African-American-generated content on the lowest rung of search results. Extrapolating that experience to a world of television that is subservient to a Google universal search master box promises a continued outlier existence for African- Americans and Asians, as well as other minorities.

AllVid will further strip-mine our value and harm viewers by serving up new banner ads (for which creators will get no compensation), ignoring privacy protections for your personal television viewing habits, and driving up bills with the massive re-engineering needed to accommodate these privileged devices.

The FCC should step back. Promoting competition is a goal we all share, but the government putting a thumb on the scale in favor of technology giants so that they can sell more ads, track our viewing habits and bury diversity programming — all in the name of competition that already exists — hardly seems to be part of the progressive legacy this FCC should leave.

Frank Washington is the CEO of Crossings TV, an award-winning, small, independent provider of Asian-language programming, information and entertainment. He conceived of the Minority Ownership Tax Certificate while a consultant in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and has served as the legal assistant to former FCC chairman Charles Ferris.

Nuvyyo, the Ottawa, Can.-based maker of the over-the-air digital video recorder Tablo, said it has added two new apps to its product for the Amazon Fire and Android TV streaming set-top boxes (such as the Asus Nexus Player).

Tablo’s new apps for Amazon Fire TV and Android TV provide two additional streaming media player options for Tablo customers to watch live and recorded Over-the-Air content on their televisions. The new apps will also include access to Tablo’s settings screen and ‘Tablo Connect’ feature, which once paired with Tablo on its home network, allows the player to access Tablo, live TV and recordings anywhere there is an Internet connection.

In addition, a live preview of Tablo’s new Roku interface is available for download as a private channel, custom-designed to have the same Netflix-style look and feel as Tablo’s mobile and web apps, including an all-new live TV grid guide. During the first stage of the live preview, users will be able to:

• Browse and set recordings coming in the next 24 hours via the Live TV grid guide
• Watch live TV (including pause & rewind)
• Browse and watch recordings (including pause, rewind and fast forward)
• Delete recordings

Over the coming months the following features will be added:

• Browse and set recordings for upcoming TV, Movies and Sports occurring in the next 14 days
• View scheduled recordings
• Search

When the updated Roku app reaches feature parity with the existing app, the current public channel will be retired in favor of the new interface.

“Over the last year we’ve built a solid base of Tablo apps for mobile devices and PCs so we felt 2015 was the time to expand our focus to the big screen experience,” said Nuvyyo CEO Grant Hall in a statement. “As cord cutting accelerates and consumers turn to OTA TV, these new apps will bring the same beautiful Tablo user interface to living rooms across North America.”

Links to all Tablo apps are available at www.TabloTV.com/apps.