There are dozens of free ad-supported alternatives to paid streaming services. In fact, most smart TVs either offer their own free services or access to ones on this list directly from the set.
Here are some more options to consider:
• CNN Originals, a free ad-supported service from CNN, is now available. Initial titles “Amanpour: Sex and Love Around the World,” “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” “Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta,” “Diana,” “Lincoln: Divided We Stand,” “Soundtracks: Songs That Defined History,” “This is Life with Lisa Ling,” “The Wonder List with Bill Weir,” and “United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell.” Right Now it’s available on Amazon Freevee, Amazon Prime and Amazon Fire TVs, as well as on Plex. The company says additional platforms will be added soon.
• Fandango At Home is the new name for the service previously known as Vudu. That company, owned by Walmart, was sold to Universal’s Fandango division and rebranded. Like Vudu, it has a “Free” section that offers a growing selection of ad-supported movies and TV shows from a wide range of genres, including action, comedy, horror, kids and family, romance, sci-fi, and more. New selections, plus a Top 200 for both movies and TV are at the top of the listings, which are then organized by themes and genres.
• Fawesome.tv is a newer ad-supported streaming service, owned by FutureToday, that offers more than 250 free channels, with movies and series in HD quality across 25 genres, including action, comedy, family and kids, health and lifestyle, horror, and thriller. Fawesome recently signed agreements with Sony Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn Films, and Gravitas Ventures to bring about 350 new movies and other streaming titles to the service.
• Google TV—available on Chromecast or Android devices or TVs that use the Google TV smart system—offers more than 800 free channels, from new providers such as Tubi, Plex, and Haystack News. They join an existing lineup of free, ad-supported channels from Pluto TV, plus Google’s own free built-in channels. Programming includes streaming news channels from all the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC—as well as more than 10 channels in foreign languages, including Spanish, Hindi, and Japanese. Like other so-called FAST (free ad-supported television) services, Google’s Live section uses an old-school cable TV-style menu with TV shows and movies that run at scheduled times, with ads that you can’t skip.
• Haystack News—formerly called Haystack TV—provides local, national, and global news from more than 400 content partners, including ABC News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance. The company says the service now provides more than 50 live news and weather channels, covering more than 90 percent of local U.S. markets. An expanded partnership with Hearst Television includes the company’s Very Local local news and information channels. A Newsline feature has an interactive news ticker with local news headlines, weather conditions, forecasts and alerts, and stock market data, plus top business, tech, and entertainment stories.
• LG Channels is a free streaming service for LG smart TV owners, with content from both Xumo and Pluto TV. It has more than 300 live and on-demand news, sports, and entertainment channels, which you can access using an integrated program guide. It has added several new channels, including LG Channels Showcase, which features studio films from Amazon MGM, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, and Shout Studios. A partnership with Allen Media group added more than 220 free local news channels, with content from the major broadcast networks, depending on where you live. If you’re using an antenna, free over-the-air channels and Channel Plus options appear together in the same program guide.
• Plex Watch Free is an ad-supported free streaming service, with more than 300 channels across multiple genres. It has deals for content from Crackle, Lionsgate, Magnolia, MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros., and other studios. Recently it added more than 90 new entries, including “Weeds,” “Designated Survivor,” and “Nash Bridges,” along with networks such as CW Gold and CW Forever. It also expanded its U.S. and international Sports channel to include FIFA+, the NFL Channel, MLB, The World Poker Tour, and CBS Sports HQ, among others. Plex recently started offering a $5-a-month upgrade, called Plex Pass, that works with an antenna to give you live local channels, plus a DVR, the ability to pause and rewind shows, and a program guide. You can also now rent movies, starting at $4.
• Samsung TV Plus—a free streaming service available on Samsung smart TVs—offers more than 350 ad-supported channels featuring news, sports, and entertainment, plus thousands of movies and TV shows on demand. A strength is its roster of news channels, including ABC News Live, CBS News, Cheddar News, LiveNow from Fox, NBC News Now, and Newsy, among others. Samsung has also partnered with Bloomberg Media to launch Bloomberg TV+, a 4K business/finance channel, and it has a deal with Vevo for a music-video channel, and with FIFA+ for men’s and women’s soccer games. Newer content includes 500 hours of programming from Hearst Media (such as “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien” and “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild”), plus A&E and Pickleball TV channels. All Samsung smart TVs dating back to 2016 are able to access TV Plus.
• Stirr is an ad-supported streaming service launched by local TV broadcaster Sinclair. However, early this year it was sold to Thinking Media, a startup focused on ad-supported content, which recently relaunched it. While Stirr once had over 100 channels and more than 5,000 hours of local content, the relaunched version has about 30 live channels, plus a growing assortment of on-demand programs. But the plan is to add to its content library, and use AI to help with search.
• TCLtv+ is a new free streaming service from TCL that’s exclusive to its smart TVs. Although it’s billed as TCLtv+, on my TCL 6-series Roku TV it’s just called TCL TV Channel. (It’s called TCLtv+ on TCL Google TVs.) It includes more than 300 free, ad-supported channels and an on-demand content library offering more than 1,500 movies and TV shows. The library is buoyed by both independent and major studios, including Scripps Media, NBC Universal, FilmRise, Fremantle, Banijay, and more. More recently, TCL’s deal with the NFL includes bringing the NFL Channel and on-demand programming to the TCLtv+ app. The service is built atop an upgraded version of the IDEO platform, which offers interactive viewing options such as online meal ordering, personalized recipes from virtual chefs, and dynamic summaries and recaps of shows you’re watching. You can find your next binge using the voice-activated remote.
• TiVo+ is available only via TiVo devices, either a TiVo DVR or a TiVo Stream 4K. TiVo+ has more than 160 free channels. The service is powered by several services, including Pluto TV and Tubi. It includes more than 40 channels of TV shows and series, 12 live news channels, and 12 live sports channels, including Major League Baseball. TiVo is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi, the parent company to home entertainment brands, including DTS and Imax Enhanced.
• Vizio WatchFree+, different from Plex’s Watch Free, is an ad-supported streaming service from Vizio and Pluto TV with more than 260 channels, including nine new streaming channels and 150 on-demand films from AMC. It has also added its own roster of channels along with ad-supported video-on-demand titles, so Vizio SmartCast users can now access thousands of on-demand titles, along with hundreds of current WatchFree+ live streaming channels, all with no subscriptions or log-ins. This summer the WatchFree+ service is showing eight exclusive U.S. for The Women’s World Cup Summer 2024 Tournament games. The big news, though, is that Vizio has been purchased by Walmart.
• YouTube’s “Free With Ads” section, found under the Movies & TV heading, has free, ad-supported offerings that are different from those on YouTube Premium, which bundles videos, original movies, TV shows, and music as part of an ad-free plan that costs $14 per month or $120 per year. YouTube’s free TV roster now has about 100 shows, with almost 4,000 episodes in all. As with many of these services, the content lineup changes periodically.
If you need a new streaming player, consider one of these.
