Locast Adds Free Local Streaming in San Francisco & Los Angeles in West Coast Expansion
Locast, the non-profit streaming service, which offers free live streaming of local channels, announced they have expanded to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The launch comes just days after adding Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and those in the rural communities around those cities.
You can stream all major locals like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, The CW, and MyNetworkTV — as well as PBS, PBS Kids, and other OTA channels like Cozi and MeTV. This is good news for Los Angeles Dodgers fans who can’t get KTLA — who will air 10 games this season — on traditional Live TV Streaming Services.
San Francisco
- ABC
- FOX
- CBS
- NBC
- The CW
- MyNetwork TV
- Telemundo
- Univsion
- Unimas
Los Angeles
- ABC
- FOX
- CBS
- NBC
- The CW
- MyNetwork TV
- Telemundo
- Univsion
- Unimas
The service which has apps for media streaming devices on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, iOS, and Android, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network devices — is now available in 13 markets. While the service is free, it requires a minimum donation of $5 a month to remove a frequent splash screen requesting donations.
Available Cities
- New York
- Philadelphia
- Boston
- Washington DC
- Baltimore
- San Francisco
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Houston
- Dallas
- Denver
- Sioux Falls
- Rapid City
Many use the service to supplement other Live TV Streaming Services link Philo or Sling TV which have limited local channels as part of their service. Locast is offered by non-profit Sports Fan Coalition New York which serves as a digital translator, meaning that Locast.org operates just like a traditional broadcast translator service, except instead of using an over-the-air signal to boost a broadcaster’s reach, they stream the signal over the Internet to consumers located within select US cities. This is the legal loophole that the non-profit uses to offer streaming for free.
The service is similar to Aereo, which was launched in 2012, but shut down through a Supreme Court decision in 2014. The main difference being that the service was for-profit and offered a DVR service for the content.
In all markets, Locast offers ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, The CW, as well as other broadcast channels like Telemundo, Univision, PBS, and independent stations — when available. Since it is a non-profit, it has asked users for donations and has been using the market providing the most funding to decide which to launch into next.