ABC has just released eight new Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick apps for local news coverage in major cities across America. The included cities are Chicago, Fresno, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham, and San Francisco. The Fire TV Appstore is filled with local news apps, but up until now, those have all been from smaller affiliate networks which are not directly owned by the major broadcast network they represent. Most local news productions in major cities are owned by the broadcast network themselves, which is why there hasn’t been local news apps for major cities released in the past. This new batch of local news apps are released by ABC themselves, which is why so many major cities are included.

The apps themselves are all identical and fairly mediocre. They include on-demand streaming videos of the most recent and largest news stories in each local city. There is unfortunately no live stream in any of these apps, which is the feature people tend to want most out of a local news app. The apps also include a 7-day weather forecast, along with clips of recent forecast videos. Hopefully someday ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX will release live streaming apps for all of their local news coverage, but for now, these new apps from ABC are a nice baby step towards that dream.