You’re probably one of the many people who have slowly become disinterested with cable and satellite TV to the point of dropping the subscription to these services and preferring to go instead for streaming services on your home TV set and/or just using the PC, laptop or mobile phone to cater for your information and entertainment needs.

If you’re not, trust me, they not only exist, but their number is growing, as “traditional” cable and satellite subscriptions are becoming obsolete.

If you are and you live in the U.S., you can rejoice, because practically the only imaginable problem of cancelling said subscriptions would be that you can no longer easily benefit from the local news coverage that was part of them. Until now.

Because NewsON, a recent initiative from five major broadcast TV groups, aims to solve specifically this problem by bringing local news to you on mobile devices, certain smart TVs and even Roku, via an app designed for this purpose.

The service boasts content (including live coverage) from 118 stations, across 75% of the United States in 90 markets.

The app is free for consumers, but ad-supported and is available for devices running both iOS and Android. Apart from the ad-based revenue, it also makes money from the monthly fees it charges station affiliates.

By this system of dual income sources which excludes charging consumers, it is estimated the service will be viable economically in the long-term, which means they can keep it free for consumers in the future as well, which in turn means it will be more appealing to the public.

So, if you want to get your NewsON app, you can do so now for free, by simply clicking the download link on the company’s website.

NewsON has a series of interesting functionalities and features. It allows you to chose what station the clips you are watching come from, be it from your home market or another that you might be visiting. It has a built-in timeline viewing tool which allows you to locate exactly which part of the broadcast you want to watch (weather, sports etc.) and an interactive map which helps you find the stations that should be most relevant to you, taking into consideration where you are.

Possibly the coolest feature is that you can send tweets about the news you are watching in real time and you can, naturally, view others’ posts.

Though, like any app, opinions vary regarding the the way it performs the above mentioned functions and regarding the design. So, it’s up for each user to decide whether this app truly solves the local news problem or not.

Image source: 1.