Locast is now available in the Tri-Cities market, which covers an area that includes Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. Locast says it will make available more than two dozen local TV channels to the area’s nearly 700,000 residents.
The Tri-Cities market includes Bristol, Johnson City and Kingsport in Tennessee; it also covers surrounding rural areas in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. Locast collaborated with Bristol Tennessee Essential Services on the deployment.
Locast delivers local TV channels to residents over the internet and with no monthly fee, though the service does ask for a donation of $5 per month to support their operations. It pitches itself as serving consumers that have either become cord-cutters or are cord-nevers.
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The rebroadcast of local signals is a point of contention, however, as major broadcasters are suing Locast over its right to do so based on the Copyright Act of 1976.
For its deployment in the Tri-Cities market, Locast delivers 27 channels, including local NBC, Fox, ABC and CBS affiliates and the likes of the CW, Court TV, ION, TrueCrime, LAFF and more.
Viewers in 19 counties across the Tri-Cities market will now be able to receive Locast services, including Leslie and Letcher counties in Kentucky; Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington counties in Tennessee; and Bristol City, Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Norton City, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Washington and Wise counties in Virginia.
Tri-Cities marks Locast’s 32nd market in the U.S. It claims that it has more than 2.6 million subscribers.
For more information, visit www.locast.org.
This story was originally published by Next TV sister publication TV Technology.
